Michael Miltenberger

Yes, Mr. Chairman.

We have the Environment Fund that out of the money that we get from recycling and any profits goes in to fund itself to allow us to engage in other activities. That fund is fairly well subscribed to, but that’s where we took some of the money, for example, to do the work on the wastepaper and cardboard. Thank you.

Should a community or interested party come forward with a proposal that would propose to be able to remedy this particular situation in a way that is going to be affordable, of course we’d be happy to look at that, keeping in mind our own limited resources and our capacity that we’re now focusing on these other key areas. But we’d be prepared to look at that. Thank you.

The environmental assessments by the federal government are planned for this summer. I think that it’s a critical first step to make sure we know what’s there and what may require cleaning up and how. We’ll be keeping an eye on this and keeping the Member informed. Once we have that information we’ll be in an informed position to make the right decisions going forward.

When it comes to wastepaper and cardboard we have identified some funds. We have gone out to communities and businesses, organizations, and we’re looking at opportunities either for recycling, true recycling, not just compacting and putting into a landfill, converting to biomass, converting to pellets. There’s a number of other options that are out there.

With e-waste, as we look at our own recycling, I know just from personal experience having taken some loads down, you can go down to Edmonton, Alberta. They have a very sophisticated e-waste recycling plant, I know, in Edmonton, and they will...

This year we intend to do very specific things. For example, the Arctic Energy Alliance is going to be going into the communities to set up workshops for training and certification programs for wood burning appliance installers and inspectors, as well as looking at how to facilitate the delivery and supply of wood pellets to remote communities. We’re going to work with the forest management division to conduct woodlot planning and inventory activities to assist once again with the firewood and wood pellet production business development.

We want to work with communities once again, through the...

INAC undertook site reconnaissance in 2009 and identified the tunnel and adjacent blast rock pile remains of a cabin and tent frames and an old beached wooden barge. INAC plans to undertake a combined phase 1 and 2 environmental site assessment in the summer of 2010. Mr. Speaker, ENR will commit to obtaining the results of the site assessment and share them with the MLA for Tu Nedhe. Thank you.

Of course the Greenhouse Gas Strategy is on the path to mitigation. It’s helping us be more responsible to cut our carbon footprint reliance on fossil fuels and help set up a system that if it’s done right could provide funding for the very many things we’re going to have to do related to adaptation to climate change as the land and waters and forests and ecosystems around us change. We’ve already spent millions on piles, we got shore erosion in some of our communities in the Beaufort-Delta and Aklavik areas. We have enormous amounts of money spent on repairing roads, even around this...

We’ll provide that list of all the subsidy programs to committee.

We don’t have that detail of information, but we can provide that to the committee, our estimates. Thank you.