Michael Miltenberger

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I can’t quantify how widely it happens, but I do agree with the Member and I’ve seen it myself where there’s smoke coming through the snowbanks even on a drive from Fort Smith to Hay River where there’s been fires. So we know it happens and we’ve mapped the burned areas, but I can’t quantify it to the extent the Member is asking.

There are a couple of initiatives that are intertwined here. We are looking at increasing the population of the Northwest Territories. That is one thing we’re trying to do. We are working, as a government, on decentralization to move positions outside of the centre, out to the communities. That work is underway. Phase three is now underway. We are also working to fill the very many vacancies we have, and we have approximately a split between Yellowknife and communities of vacancies anywhere between five to 800 positions that we’re trying to fill in both inside Yellowknife and outside of...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We’re not, in effect, losing jobs. What we’re trying to do is find people to fill the jobs that we have that are in many cases going begging. We have met as a government now numerous times.

We have a working committee that’s looking at a whole host of things, very simple things like the issue that has bedeviled many of us in many of the departments from following up with our students has been this issue that ECE had with confidentiality and an inability to share the information on students in school, where they are, what they’re studying, so that we can in fact make sure...

Yes, we are aware of the committee’s concern and of course, from a business perspective, we know that that number is too small. We have looked at sort of a 10-year rolling average and it would be about $10 million. So we’re going to look, based on our work and committee’s recommendations, we’re going to be looking at how we can have a base budget that’s more reflective of the reality. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. That final calculation is still being compiled and we’ll have that in the coming weeks. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Section 32.1(2) of the Financial Administration Act, I wish to table the following document, entitled “List of Inter-activity Transfers Exceeding $250,000 for the period of April 1, 2013, to March 31, 2014.” Thank you.

If there was one of the two options that the Member talked about in his statement, if one of those was put into effect, either the running of the grid north along the west side across the bridge up to Behchoko or running a low voltage line down as the Member suggested in his statement, both would have the benefit of taking two communities off of diesel-generated electricity and would bring the costs in line with Yellowknife and would drop the emissions. It would be a much better long-term solution for all and would get a big chunk of community needs off of fossil fuel.

Mr. Speaker, I move, seconded by the honourable Member for Tu Nedhe, that Bill 9, Forgiveness of Debts Act, 2013-2014, be read for the third time. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to do two quick things. I’d like to just give a bit more context and then speak to some of the specifics of the work that’s being done.

In the last Assembly there was a recognition that we were moving towards devolution, and it was going to come and we need to get our thinking clear, and we started the work on the Land Use and Sustainability Framework, we started the work on the Water Strategy, we enhanced and increased our efforts to get the Wildlife Act done. We accomplished those things so that as we moved forward to take over the authorities we’re talking...

Thank you. The government will continue to invest, as we’ve laid out in our business plan, in relatively modest investments that we can afford in the different areas with renewables, with solar, with biomass, with energy efficiencies, rebate programs, those types of things. We’re also looking to successfully conclude our negotiations and discussion with the federal government on our increased borrowing limit that would give us the opportunity to sit down and talk about these economic investments, be it grid expansions in the North and South Slave, road expansion between Wrigley and Norman...