Michael Miltenberger

Thank you, Madam Chair. I have with me at the witness table Mike Aumond, deputy minister of Finance and Mr. Olin Lovely, the director of Management Board Secretariat.

Yes, Madam Chair. The interim appropriation requests authority for appropriation of $404.121 million for operations expenditures in the 2012-13 fiscal year.

This interim budget provides the necessary resources for the government to operate in the first three months of the 2012-2013 fiscal year. As discussed with committees previously, the 2012-2013 Main Estimates, or full budget, will be presented during the May/June sitting of the Legislative Assembly.

I will explain the methodology of the interim appropriation development and clarify that the interim provides for only a portion of the full...

The cure for the broken heart the Member is referring to, of course, is to sign the Devolution Agreement, and the authorities and money will flow and he’ll feel much better.

In terms of his specific request on the Liquor Act, the Member is very well aware that the average timeline is about two years for amendments, but before we even get to that point we have to have the fundamental discussion about laws of general application and can we make laws of that nature in the Liquor Act. Can we tailor them region by region when people have broad rights that they have given to them under the Canadian...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m aware of the Member’s concerns and some of the folks in his constituency. The issue of the Liquor Act and changing it away from a law of general application to one of regional application is one that I am prepared to look at as Minister to see what’s possible. I’m prepared to sit down with the Member if he wants to have discussions or he wants to put his fingers to the keyboard and lay out the very specific question that he may be contemplating. We would, of course, give it our full attention.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. There were operation requirements. The positions weren’t hidden from view. They were reflected in the org charts. The fact that they were funded from within has now been sorted where they moved money, as Mr. Aumond said, from their operational budget into salary dollars. But the fact is they’ve had some other recent changes of staff, so they’ve re-profiled and re-classified some of the positions to do different things and it’s a normal business of government. It’s being shown here. They’ve moved the dollars out of O and M so that it’s going to be funded and it will be...

Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Transportation looks after and is responsible for the highway system in the Northwest Territories. He is responsible. This Cabinet is responsible for addressing the issues of the Members as they are raised in this House. Specifically, the highway issue and the highway inventory will be addressed by the Minister of Transportation as he comes forward with the business plan for the coming year. As we resolve and finalize and move forward with the borrowing limit issue, it will give us the capacity to address this particular circumstance. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Given the Minister’s intimate knowledge of his department, I’ll defer the question to him.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We do have a plan for the Northwest Territories. It has been articulated since we have picked the Cabinet and since we set our priorities. One of the major objectives in this Assembly, given the fiscal circumstances that we are in, what happened in the last Assembly as we put all of our pre-capital to take advantage of the stimulus money from the federal government and put out a $1.1 billion capital program over three years is to look at our borrowing limit. Our borrowing limit talks are productive. They are going to result in an increased borrowing limit. The reason...

The money, the last year of the $60 million four-year Energy Fund concludes at the end of March. We do not have the replacement funds for that in place at this point. There are a number of programs that were added to the base but there are a lot of sunsets. The challenge going forward coming when we get to May when the borrowing limit is cleared up and we look at what type of infrastructure investments we want to plan for one of the areas, of course in addition to the red flag capital list, is going to be the whole area of energy.

There are two potential options. I could commit to get the information from the Department of Transportation, or Minister Ramsay will be back tomorrow and ready to appear before the House on Friday. Either way, I can commit to get the information. I don’t have the detail that the Member is asking of me today.