Michael Miltenberger

Mr. Chairman, I am here to present Bill 2, Forgiveness of Debts Act, 2009-2010. This bill requests authority for the forgiveness of certain debts listed in the schedule of the act.

Pursuant to Section 25 of the Financial Administration Act, the forgiveness of a debt or obligation to the government exceeding $1,000 must receive Legislative Assembly approval.

When a debt is forgiven, no further collection action shall be pursued. The forgiveness of certain debts being proposed in this act will not require a new appropriation. Allowances for doubtful accounts were charged to an appropriation at the...

Once again, the Member and I are aiming for the same goal. I have been suggesting and saying right from the start that, yes, we have to do these broad strategies. Yes, we have to have that long and intense debate about targets, standards. In the meantime, we should be doing things on the ground and we shared the information with the Members about the dozens of initiatives that Public Works has taken in its mandate for retrofits. We are doing some very innovative things with ground source heat pumps. We have initiatives with wind, we are moving on the mini-hydro with Lutselk’e, in addition to...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. This whole initiative going into year two is a major undertaking. We recognize that the Biomass Strategy is at a high level and as we work through our various energy plans, as we review and redo our Greenhouse Gas Strategy, as we look at all the other components of our Energy Strategy, that the debate and decision-making that’s going to take place with regard to standards and targets is going to flow from that. Thank you.

Yes, Mr. Chairman.

As he talks about our modest efforts and what he sees as miniscule goals and targets, we do have a project, just one project that I’ll point to which is the Taltson Hydro Project that could reduce our overall greenhouse gas emissions by 15 percent. We know we are already saving thousands of tonnes just with the work the government has done, let alone all the things that are going to come into play. We’ve committed to and we are going to start the process in April 2010 to renew the Greenhouse Gas Strategy with a full intent to have a final product by April 2011. It will speak to a lot of the...

In case I hadn’t mentioned it, we are committing $60 million to this initiative. We finished year one. We are moving into year two. We are committed to community energy plans. We are also working very closely with all the other strategies within government. We are looking at government itself doing a significant number of retrofits. We are growing the market with biomass, with our efforts, with the communities, within government retrofits, within the private sector. We’ve also started discussions and planning in terms of inventory to see what type of biomass industry could be sustainable and...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Margaret Melhorn, deputy minister of Finance; Charles Tolley, the director of Management Board Secretariat.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to recognize, of course, Mr. and Mrs. Bohnet, Wanda Powder, Darrell Bohnet Jr., Shirley Bohnet, Sevn Bohnet, Seth Bohnet, Kelly Kubic, and Bonita Bohnet. Not with us, of course, are some of the other folks: Darrell Bohnet, Gary Bohnet and Gordon Bohnet. Welcome to the Assembly. I’m glad you’re here.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I’m here to present Supplementary Appropriation (Infrastructure Expenditures) No. 1, 2010-2011. This document outlines a decrease of $300,000 for operations expenditures and an increase of $1.7 million for capital investment expenditures in the 2010-2011 fiscal year. The total supplementary request is $1.4 million.

This supplementary appropriation includes:

$1.7 million for the Department of Transportation to complete the project description report on the portion of the Mackenzie Highway from Wrigley to the Dempster Highway. The costs incurred in 2010-11 will be...

Mr. Tolley.