Michael Miltenberger

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am pleased to present Supplementary Appropriation No. 4, 2008-2009. This document requests authority for additional appropriations of $46,691,000 for operations expenditures for the 2008-2009 fiscal year.

There are two items in this request:

1.

To provide appropriation authority in the amount of $9.3 million for the Department of the Executive, Financial Management Board Secretariat to record the increase required to the estimated accrued environment liabilities of the Government of the Northwest Territories as at March 31, 2009, as required by Canadian Generally...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Of course, we’re prepared to work with the Member and, as we indicated in our meetings with the small, rural, remote communities committee, the idea of sitting down with the committee and some of the members from the communities and Association of Communities would help us initiate that process.

I would like to point out, though, that while we managed to keep government expenditures to 2 percent, the money that flowed through the communities was kept at 9 percent in recognition of the fact that there are needs at the community level.

So I take the Member’s concern and...

Work is being done by ENR. The work has been done and supported by the Climate Change Committee and the Ministerial Energy Coordinating Committee as well as Managing This Land when it comes to these various issues of the biomass strategy, moving forward with the technology, the issue, the impact on greenhouse gases, all those are part of the variable that we are considering as we deal with this issue as a government.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. On my immediate left I have Margaret Melhorn, deputy minister of Finance; to my immediate right, Mr. Michael Aumond, deputy minister of Public Works and Services; to his immediate right, Mr. Russ Neudorf, deputy minister of Transportation. Thank you.

Yes, there have been millions of dollars voted for this year, in the neighbourhood of $15 million or so, to get us started on the very many projects, both in biomass, wind, possibly geothermal, mini-hydro. There is a whole host of areas that we want to do work. Now it is incumbent upon us to roll out the work plans and the implementation, to get as many of these projects towards the construction stage as possible.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am pleased to present Supplementary Appropriation No. 2, 2009-2010 (Infrastructure Expenditures). This document outlines an increase of $69.835 million for operations expenditures, and an increase of $101.669 million for capital investment expenditures in the 2009-2010 fiscal year. To clarify the document, of the $172 million in the total additional appropriation being requested through this supplementary appropriation, $112 million is for the carry-over of funding for infrastructure project, funding for which was approved and lapsed in 2008-2009. The carry-overs in...

Yes, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will start with the deputy.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I seek unanimous consent to return to item 16, notices of motion for first reading of bills. Thank you.

---Unanimous consent granted

I’m not in a position to give many specifics other than we want to work with every community to look at the type of alternate energy project that makes the most sense. If it’s biomass, if it’s wind, those are things that have yet to be determined.