Michael Miltenberger

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. There was a considerable review done on this, which is one of the reasons it took so long. As Mr. Bromley pointed out, the initial report, if it was accepted at full face value, would be coming forward with dozens and dozens of new jobs, which we knew in our day and age of ongoing fiscal restraint was not sustainable, supportable or acceptable, so we’ve worked at how we could address this and do some of the improvements. We’ve taken over, once again, $65 million worth of new programs, hundreds of staff, in addition to the fact that it has been clearly pointed out to us...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The update on the NWT Growth Strategy is on its way to committee. I just signed the letter at the break and we will be tabling it before the end of session by Thursday.

What is contemplated here is to deal with the increased number of seats that we have, spots that we have with the Immigration Program and to be able to ramp up the recruiting and the advertising and getting the required immigrant staff or folks who are interested in coming or immigrating to the Northwest Territories to get them into the system, through the system under the new Express Program that has...

The facts, when you take away all the bavardage and bafflegab, is that there is a 10 cent, 30 percent rate difference between Hay River and Fort Smith and Fort Resolution. The Town of Hay River has made a conscious decision to go out and start a public process to seek providers to distribute power under a franchise agreement. We, the Power Corporation, are going to put a bid in. There is no guarantee that we are going to get it, be successful. Other bidders may be successful, if they choose to bid. That is yet to be seen.

What we do know is there are issues where there are, according to the...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The money that we’ve got into our A-base, $65.3 million, is for specific functions tied to land, water and resource development. We don’t have the latitude to be able to say we’ve decided we’re going to spend half of it now on social programs, for example. We have obligations tied to devolution and agreements we signed to honour that commitment and fund those critical functions tied to land, water and issues related to managing that and the resource development.

In regard to the question about the layout, I’ll defer to the Premier, Mr. Chair, with your concurrence.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We can provide that information to committee. Thank you.

We weren’t secretly supporting anything. The rates are there. There is a rate rebalancing process underway. It has been set at a 1 percent increase for this year and 3 percent for subsequent years as we move towards rebalancing. Rebalancing a rate structure that we inherited going back to federal times that is well superseded, in many cases, by the requirement for NTPC and the government to put money into things to protect the rates for all power users in the Northwest Territories, regardless of who provides or who distributes the power. I would refer specifically to things like the $37...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I apologize if I wasn’t clear enough. This was a two-step process. We did the functional review of our communications system which gave us the information that pointed to areas of concern, including the under-resourcing and being better organized to take on these new responsibilities. Based on that work, which is already done, we’ve come forward with this request to put some resources into the communication systems to make sure we can address those issues, improve the communication systems and incorporate all the work that needs to be done with the new authorities.

So...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. These numbers are calculated as of April 1st, and some of it, as we’ve noted, some have gone up and some have gone down depending on the communities in the region. Thank you.

We are at work with other jurisdictions mapping the spread of the black legged tick that usually inhabits deer as it moves around. At this point we don’t think it has moved north, but yes, we are monitoring that, the same as we were keeping our eye on the pine beetle to see if that was going to come north into the boreal forests north of 60. We will, as well, continue to do rotating moose surveys in various jurisdictions to keep track of the herd numbers and health of the moose. Thank you.

The work was still being concluded. The report has been written, the assessments made. We had to take it back through the due process and we weren’t able to get it done in time. That would have been our initial preference, but it was not possible, hence this request through the supplementary appropriation process. Thank you.