Michael Miltenberger

Yes, Mr. Chair. Thank you.

We, as a government, have mapped out our next steps, now that we know the transmission project is prohibitively expensive to look at generation in all the communities. That is the plan where we believe there is the ability to seriously affect the cost of living.

The Member would know, as a Member of this Legislative Assembly, while from Inuvik, to look at all the needs of people in the Northwest Territories, that it would not be possible just to look at Inuvik as a stand-alone community for some special subsidy when you listen to the cost of living in McPherson and Tsiigehtchic and Sachs and...

As I indicated, we are looking at trying to minimize the reliance on diesel. We’re looking at a whole host of ways to do that. So no, there is no subsidy for heating fuel being considered. If we did it we’d have to do it for every thermal community, we’d have to do it across the Northwest Territories. It would be tremendously expensive and at the end of the day I don’t think it would do much over the long term to minimize reliance and encourage people to look at other alternatives other than diesel. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, the 2014 forest fire season is officially over.

This year a total of 3.4 million hectares of forested land were affected by 385 wildland fires. This was composed of six reported fires in the Inuvik region, 32 in the Sahtu region, 52 in the Deh Cho region, 143 in the North Slave region and 152 in the South Slave region. An estimated $60 million was spent fighting fires in the 2014 forest fire season.

In keeping with established policies, action was taken on 126, or 33 percent, of reported fires to protect values at risk. Wildland fire responses were required on eight large complex...

Once again, I appreciate the Member’s comments. I will just accept and thank him for making them. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have with me Deputy Minister Mike Aumond and the director of the Management Board Secretariat, Olin Lovely. Thank you.

I am here to present Supplementary Estimates (Operations Expenditures), No. 2, 2014-2015. This document outlines an increase of $63.994 million in operations expenditures for the 2014-2015 fiscal year.

The more significant items included in the supplementary estimates are:

$47.4 million for the Department of Environment and Natural Resources related to two special warrants that were approved to address costs of fire suppression during the extreme fire season this summer;

$20 million for the Department of Finance to mitigate the impact of extreme low water conditions on the Snare Hydro...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. With me is the deputy minister, Ernie Campbell; and Mr. Bill Mawdsley, director of forest fire operations. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I wish to table the following two documents, entitled “Supplementary Estimates (Infrastructure Expenditures), No. 4, 2014-15,” and “Supplementary Estimates (Operations Expenditures), No. 2, 2014-2015”. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. As the Member indicates, I think this is our third year to have seen the 802s operate under full forest fire operating conditions, under extreme forest fire operating conditions, especially last summer. They have performed admirably. The 802s would equal the impact of the four 215s that we do currently have. The four 215s, which I point out are probably 60 years old, roughly, burn fuel that is going to become obsolete in the not-too-distant future. There’s three years left on the current contract. We have at least two instances and one near incident where we actually...