Michael Miltenberger

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. That’s part of the $200 million that the Premier referenced that we’re paying in subsidies, and if we’re going to do that for every homeowner and every business in the Northwest Territories, then I would suggest that even the hydro community folks would be there demanding that they have to pay heating fuel as well. I think it would truly beggar this government and would be very counterproductive if we just subsidized the cost of fuel. There would be no incentive for business to drop the prices.

As the world price goes down, they know that whatever they charge we will pay. We’re far...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Over the last three years with Inuvik’s troubles with their gas wells taking on water and the issue of using propane, between the Power Corp and the government, we’ve put in about $8 million to make sure we’ve tried to cushion the blow of the loss of the gas. We’ve switched the Power Corp initially to diesel; we switched our buildings back to diesel to make sure we freed up much cheaper gas to the people of Inuvik. On top of that we have a lot of programs for conservation, energy efficiencies, appliances, insulation, windows, which reduce your energy requirements. But...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the Member’s concern and his comments. If you look at the whole fiscal picture at the end of this Assembly or where we currently are now, I would say while we have challenges, it’s not as bleak as the Member would indicate and we are doing an enormous amount of very critical things like the $350 million project at Stanton. We’re discussing a $314 million capital plan, which we bumped up $50 million this year. So there are enormous challenges for a government this size, for a territory this large with the demands as many and varied as they are.

This...

Thank you. I guess there are a couple things. There is the portrayal of a deep and abiding suspicion of the motives of Conair. They’re in a business and one of their functions is that they’re the supplier of an aircraft, and the only supplier. They’ve told us in writing that in fact there are no caveats, that we can expect full support, and if we want more of their services, they’d be happy to have those discussions, but it’s not contingent upon us getting the planes, that they won’t sell us the planes unless they’re given all these other considerations. They pretty clearly and categorically...