Michael Miltenberger

I just want to reassure the Member and the House that as we move forward with our climate change adaptation plans and mitigation plans, that we will be spending money. Right now it’s not clearly budgeted for. I can point to, for example, the response that we had to undertake with the rotting piles issue as the ground has warmed up and all the piles across the land and the buildings up north required replacement or adjusting or repair, that we came forward through our own budgeting process with money that was built in to accommodate that.

The same is going to happen in these circumstances. As...

Michael Aumond, deputy minister of Municipal and Community Affairs. Thank you.

We appreciate the support from the Member on these efforts. Thank you.

Margaret Melhorn, deputy minister of Finance; Paul Guy, acting deputy minister of Public Works and Services.

I will be talking about this issue with my Cabinet colleagues tomorrow morning and we’ll look at what’s possible and is there an ability to use existing legislation from other jurisdictions modified to the northern reality and not have to do this from scratch to see what’s possible. Thank you.

A full briefing on both these particular pieces of legislation has been offered to committee and the folks stand ready to sit down with committee to be able to go through in detail both pieces of legislation, the amendments to the Dog Act as well as the new legislation and the work that the working committee has done. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, I wish to advise Members that the Honourable Floyd Roland will be absent from the House today and tomorrow to attend a meeting of provincial and territorial Ministers of Aboriginal Affairs and leaders of national aboriginal organizations in Toronto, Ontario. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I believe there will be an opportunity tomorrow night with the meeting of the Rural and Remote communities to look at that as one of the possible options for recommendation. Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, the Member’s question of whether we have confidence that we will be able to carry out the projects, of course we have confidence in our staff. We will have to qualify that by stating that this past year and this year coming has produced a large number of projects, a very large budget, probably the biggest budget in our department’s history, and it’s really put a strain on our staff to deliver them. But we’re quite pleased to state that 80-plus percent of our projects that are on our books are either at the tender stage or are in the actual construction stage. So we will probably...

I wish to table the following document entitled the Department of Finance: Strategic Action Plan 2009-2012. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.