Michael Miltenberger

This was in the tail end of summer and in the heat of the fire season. The Power Corporation had followed their process and notified the PUB, and we are aware of that as well. Then the issue came to be what was the impact gathering Cabinet to have those discussions and what would be the response and the need to review what was we thought the most feasible way to proceed, and what did we need to provide to the PUB to give them the assurance that whatever decision that was made would make NTPC whole in terms of the money they were requiring and that we were going to get through that rate rider.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The Member’s question is consistent. What he’s asking is consistent with the concerns being raised by Mr. Bromley about extreme fire events, not just fire events but extreme weather events, changing rain patterns. If you look, it’s hard not to see it wherever you look in the news. If it’s here, if it’s California, if it’s down in Brazil, it’s down in Africa, all over the world, if it’s not flooding there’s enormous long-term drought and unpredictability. To the issue of…(inaudible)…where they used to be able to predict whether within a fairly set range is gone for the...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I agree with the Member’s assessment and we have been talking about this for quite some time now, about the impacts of climate change and global warming and extreme weather events. We have been dealing with the costs to us, as a government, now for quite some time. I think back to things like having to replace all the wooden piles as the temperatures warmed and they thawed out and turned to, basically, mush. Either change the piles or replace the buildings, not to mention all the other impacts. So, I agree and we are going to be working collectively here to deal with...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just note that there’s a clause in the current contract that does also allow for a three-year extension of the current contract.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the Member’s assessment, her bottom line assessment that at the end of the day it was a good decision to put the $20 million to offset the rates. The intent was not to make Members look bad. The intent was to deal with a pressing issue that was going to put all of our constituents under needless or extra financial burden at a time when we’re all struggling with how do we deal with the cost of living. We do place great value on protocols. We spend an enormous amount of time when we do business on process, making sure we’ve touched every base that needs to...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Once the start-up is over, the anticipation is that it would become a part of the regular budgeting process and not necessarily through the supplementary appropriation process.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. In regards to the first issue raised by the Member, we provide weekly updates to MLAs during fire season and we will add a financial component to that to allow Members to track, as do we, the costs and expenditures during fire season.

In regard to the second issue, I want to, of course, concur with the Member that Northerners have reacted very favourably to the $20 million that was used to offset the proposed rate increase, and the reason that we did $20 million - $15 for the rest of this fiscal year, $5 million to carry us over to June – is because we had to give the...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. The Member is correct in this case. Building season and the school year got way ahead of the legislative and budgetary process that we run and we are currently in. So the Member is correct. There were commitments made. There was a need to be ready and so the work was, certainly in these instances, done, contrary to what the law of general application for supplementary appropriations and getting approval before you spend the money, in order to meet the program needs, as the Member alluded to. Thank you.

Yes, Mr. Chair. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. It’s new money. Thank you.