Michael Miltenberger

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This is a meeting of global proportions to do with one of the most pressing issues of our time, which is global warming, climate change. There’s going to be a whole host of critical meetings from the heads of states for the countries to meetings that will involve the Premier, meetings that will involve myself and the MLAs that are going to be attending. There’s going to be an opportunity to have meetings with all the circumpolar countries to talk about issues related to climate change in the circumpolar world. There’s going to be an opportunity for us to make the case...

I am pleased to present Supplementary Appropriation No. 3 (Infrastructure Expenditures), 2009-2010. This document outlines an increase of $1.025 million for capital investment expenditures in the 2009-2010 fiscal year.

This supplementary appropriation includes:

$480,000 for the Legislative Assembly for the costs associated with the purchase and installation of a biomass heating system for the Legislative Assembly building;

$460,000 for the Department of Education, Culture and Employment for three community learning centres. The costs will be cost-shared on a 50 percent basis by the federal...

If it is on GNWT property, then the GNWT would be responsible. If it is on federal property, the federal government would be responsible. I think back to the major spill at the college in Fort Smith where they had tanks that leaked for a number of years. It was a massive clean-up. I would suggest that the owner of the property would have a primary responsibility. Thank you.

We’re all travelling economy, so we’re going to try to put the taxpayers’ money to the best possible use. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, we started this process to resolve those issues and they are increasingly complex questions the Member is posing in this House. We are not going to be able to resolve that level of complex question in this House in question period. I am not an expert, unlike my colleague from the Sahtu, on negotiating land claims. It’s a question that is going to have to be resolved, and we set up a process to answer those questions and all the others that are going to come forth as we look at this issue. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, I have stated in the House that we have committed and initiated a process involving other government departments, the aboriginal governments, management boards and other stakeholders over the coming months to put this issue on the table, peel this complex onion to see where it takes us and look at what happened, what steps we need to take to resolve the circumstance and the situation to ensure we comply with the land claim agreements and all our other obligations. Thank you.

We’ll have one of our staff tied to the federal delegation paid for by the federal government and then we will have seven people: Premier Roland, myself, three MLAs and two staff. Thank you.

...in this circumstance? Do we go to an arbitration panel? That might be where we end up once this process goes through the steps and we consult and we talk to the aboriginal governments, the management boards, the stakeholders and see how we resolve this, because it is an area where there is an area of dispute and we need to come up with a way to resolve this. Thank you.

The Member has laid out the legal challenge that we have before us where you have two competing rights of first refusal and a licence holder and a licence that overlaps in the two regions. We have, as I’ve indicated, people in our department, we are working with the Department of Justice, we are working with the aboriginal governments, we’re going to talk to the stakeholders and the management boards about how do we deal with this situation that in all probability was not anticipated as these agreements were all signed off. Thank you.

Sandy Kalgutkar, deputy secretary of the FMB.