Michael Miltenberger

I’ll ask the officials in ENR to take a look to see what other studies have said. Clearly the numbers don’t bear out the type of investment the Member would seem to want and the risk to public safety, I would once again submit, is greater if you’re driving the highways in the North, especially towards the southern part where there’s moose, of hitting a moose where there has clearly been fatalities that I’m aware of both in the North and in the South. Once again, the ultimate responsibility of the vehicle is under the control of the driver and the driver has every responsibility to exercise due...

The officials are listening as we speak and we’ll make sure that this information that I have before me is there for the public as well.

My understanding is if there’s an agreement for mirror legislation, that once we take it over it becomes territorial legislation. If we, in fact, end up with a process where the federal legislation stays in place and we accept the role of delegated authority from the federal legislation, then clearly the federal government would have the final say since it’s their legislation. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We are at the table with the federal government negotiating devolution. This issue has been on the table, the regulatory reform issue has been on the table for some time. The federal government has made it clear they intend to make some dramatic changes. They’ve laid those out, as the Member has indicated. We have our own position that we have laid out that was public, it was on the website, that was dissimilar to the one put forward by the federal government. However, the federal government has indicated their intention to proceed.

The Member is very well aware, I think, of the complexity of the Dehcho Land Use Plan and Protected Areas Strategy listing sites as conservation areas. There’s a process that’s been underway for many, many years now. If there was any wish to change that, it would be done through the table that currently is trying to resolve that issue.

I know as a government we’re committed to trying to get the Dehcho Land Use Plan agreed to and approved. It’s been a long time in the works. That issue would flow through that process and would require, I think, a significant amount of discussion if there’s going...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I appreciate the Member raising this concern and I would be happy to share with him the information that I do have on the work that’s been done over the last number of years on this issue that’s come up. The very specific question that he asked, I will have discussions with the officials of ENR and the deputy, keeping in mind that fisheries is a federal obligation and as of late they’ve been under some pressure due to deficit reductions and layoffs and such. We’ll see what is possible. I appreciate the Member’s concern and I’ll once again share the information that I do...

The accidents involving bison are on a fairly significant decline, it would appear, because of the concerns that have been voiced over the years and the efforts that have been made to inform the public, to educate them, to do some of the signage issues, the increased hunting, the tags, which I think has been a great deterrent to bison hanging around the roads. The worst time of the year is October as things get dark and people still drive at speeds that they do in the summer and often get surprised. I also understand, as well, that bison don’t, unlike other animals, turn into the approaching...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As we laid out in the budget, we are in fact going to be focusing a lot of our attention on replenishing our depleted cash reserves to put money aside so that in year three or four we will be able to add additional resources and revenues into increasing our commitment to infrastructure in a lot of the key areas. This is going to be done in a number of ways. We’re going to limit the forced growth; we’re going to continue to work on being efficient and effective; we’re going to continue with the attention to how we spend the money within government to avoid unnecessary...

I agree with the Member about the Heritage Fund and its role. We’ve committed to when we do devolution and when we get into year three and four, we’ll be looking at trying to finally put some seed money into that very important fund.

It was also raised in the House today about trying to increase the money for investment in businesses to the Minister of ITI. We had to, in fact as part of our financial restructuring, turn back the Opportunities Fund where we had about $120 million sitting in a bank for investment, but it wasn’t covered by our borrowing limit; it would have gone against our...

Mr. Speaker, there are three key components to a broad territorial-wide Energy Strategy that I believe in the coming life of this Assembly. One of them is the one the Member has talked about, which is the Hydro Strategy. We are visiting that. There are also significant opportunities, for example in places like Deline to put in power in a very environmentally sustainable, friendly way. The Solar Strategy will help us address the crushing diesel costs in the thermal communities. Then we have the broader issue and the pressing issue of sorting out the Inuvik long-term energy needs.

All of these...