Michael Miltenberger

Madam Chair, it may sound more authoritative if Mr. Kalgutkar says it.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. The red tape initiative is going to have two focuses. One focus is going to be, of course, internal within government, and to look for those types of improvements that will speed up processes, in terms of paper, steps required, things that maybe haven’t been reviewed in many years. The one where we think there’s an opportunity to do good work is, as the Premier indicated, we’ve consistently been ranked very low by the Canadian Federation of Independent Businesses, for example, in terms of the red tape. We think some of that is tied into the federal government, but we want...

Thank you, Madam Chair. The loan was public. It was very topical and extensively covered in the newspaper. The loan was repaid in full early and I indicated what the interest rate was. I don’t know. I’ll ask Mr. Kalgutkar. I don’t think we have that detail. So we don’t have that detail on that particular loan here. It’s been wrapped up and paid off for some time, but that information is available and I agree to provide it to committee if that’s their wish. Thank you.

Thank you. The discussion with the federal government, they made it clear to us that they were not going to cover off the Opportunities Fund under the borrowing limit. We had an arrangement prior to that, it was satisfactory and worked fine, that the Auditor General said was fine and the federal government, Finance Canada said in their opinion they disagreed and this would become part of our borrowing limit. We are not in a position to do that, so we made the decision, we were negotiating an increase to our borrowing limit. It wasn’t going to be bumped up enough to accommodate the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I wish to table the following three documents, entitled “Supplementary Estimates (Infrastructure Expenditures), No. 7, 2010-2011;” “Supplementary Estimates (Operations Expenditures, No. 4, 2010-2011;” and “Supplementary Estimates (Infrastructure Expenditures), No. 1, 2012-2013.”

As well, I wish to table the following document, entitled “A Review of Cost Pressures Facing the Northwest Territories Power Corporation, March 2012.”

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. No, we haven’t done a lot more work on returning that particular amount of money. What we have done is put our minds to trying to expand this whole fund and recycling effort to now include electronic or e-waste. That was where we’ve been trying to focus our attention with the resources we have available. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. At this juncture the majority, over $3 million, is water.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We’ve had some money added to our base to do this on an ongoing basis so that we’re not always in a position of reacting or trying to come back for funding periodically that we recognize there needs to be work done on an ongoing basis. My recollection is that to do all the herds this year, harkening back to my Minister’s statement, is in the neighbourhood of a million dollars plus.

Mr. Chair, I have with me Mr. Ernie Campbell, deputy minister of Environment and Natural Resources; and Nancy Magrum, director of financial administrative services for shared services between ITI and ENR. Thank you.

Madam Speaker, there is work underway. Recent meetings were just held. The GNWT, in order to assist this program, has to get its thinking clear both on the boundary, which they haven’t finally resolved, as well as the issue of surface and subsurface protection. Other than that, this process I think has moved forward. I understand the meetings were very productive. We intend to get back to the rest of the parties through this process in the near future. Thank you.