Wendy Bisaro

Thanks, Mr. Chair. I have a couple of questions here. The first one has to do with the amount of money for the H.H. Williams Hospital in Hay River. I see that this is a carry-over amount of some $200,000. I thought that we had advanced money for this project, so I’m wondering why we still have a carry-over at this point. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today I want to revisit the subject of daycares and daycare funding. Over the years this government has repeatedly professed that children are important and that we care for our children, but the actions they’ve taken belie their words.

We don’t have many licenced daycares in the territory. Lots of communities have no daycare at all. Those licenced daycares which do exist in the NWT can get some funding from Education, Culture and Employment to help them with their operations, but it’s well-known that the current funding opportunities are not really working for them. For...

Thanks to Mr. Aumond for that. I’m presuming that if we are advancing $1.5 million that we’re probably going to have to borrow it. Have we considered the cost of advancing the money in terms of borrowing against the money that we’re saving? I imagine it probably isn’t a heck of a lot, but I have to ask the question. Thank you.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. I just have a few comments, as well, and I feel the same as Mr. Bromley. Although, from what I understand, the amount of carry-over this year in terms of dollars is larger than what we carried over last year. The percentage of our total capital budget has gone way down, by about 10 to 15 percent, I believe. So, I think that is an indication that we are being a little bit more realistic in what work we can do, and I think the departments are getting out ahead of the game, so to speak, and making sure that the projects that they get capital money for are, as much as possible...

Mr. Chair, I move that we report progress.

---Carried

Thanks, Mr. Chair. Okay, I guess I misunderstood the other day, but that’s good. Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I’m not quite sure how to follow that. I am having a very hard time reconciling that we advanced $20 million and now we’re lapsing $5 million.

The other part of my question is what impact is this going to have on the schedule for completion of the highway? I don’t think I heard an answer to that. Thank you.

Thanks. I’ll change direction a little bit here. This is a non-cash item, as the Minister said in his opening remarks and he kind of alluded to a bit in talking to Mr. Bromley about how do we pay for this stuff. So, we’re recording a number of $25 million-and-some. It’s non-cash at the moment, but how do we pay for this $25 million? Because we’ve said we have $25 million of remediation work to do. So, how do we pay for that? Do we have a reserve, or are we accumulating money over a period of time? How do we end up with $25 million to do the remediation work whenever it needs to be done? Thank...

Thanks, Mr. Chair, and thanks to Mr. Kalgutkar. That does explain why this is here. I guess it would have helped if there was an explanation that it was offset by funding which we already had in the bank. Thank you.

Thanks to the Minister. Yes, I’m not surprised that you don’t want to guess, either, as to the amount. So, just to confirm, at this point we think that we have found all the contaminated sites, both operating and non-operating on Commissioner’s land in the NWT. Is that right? Thanks.