Wendy Bisaro

At the risk of belabouring the point, thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am having trouble understanding the budgeted dollar amount for utilities in 2008-09. Was it totally out of line? How come we had to put $800,000 in from the supplementary reserve right off the bat?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I wanted to ask, the supp is indicating $56,000 for increased utility costs, another $382,000 further down in highways and then again in marine and again in road licensing and safety. I look at the supplementary reserve amount that went to Transportation; it shows $800,000, which was for utility budget deficiencies. Do we have the $996,000 for utilities deficiencies plus the $800,000 from the supplementary reserve? Is that all going to utility deficiencies? Thank you.

No, that’s all. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and I agree with the Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I want to express pretty much the same comments that were expressed earlier by Mr. Abernethy and Mr. Ramsay. I, too, have had great difficulty with the size of this supp as it has come forward. It was my expectation that with departments having a certain amount of money to sort of deal with on their own that it might reduce the amount of the supplementary appropriations that have come forward and it has not. So I’m a little disappointed in that.

I think philosophically that giving money to the departments up front, giving the $15 million out is a good idea. I think we...

Thanks for that answer. I appreciate that. It’s a reasonably complex issue. At one point when we were into this discussion and I believe there was a press release that occurred at some point in time between November and now...There is an awareness campaign I think that the department is running. I just wondered if I could get a little bit of an explanation or an elaboration on what sort of an awareness campaign is being run in relation to distracted drivers. Thank you.

Thank you to the Minister for both being willing and hopefully he is able. There are a lot of pros and cons to developing a policy of this sort. I fully acknowledge that up front, but I think that we should have that discussion. It should be an in-depth discussion. When does he think he might bring something back, a draft policy, even just a draft discussion document to Regular Members for consideration? Thank you.

I don’t know if the Minister intended to segue right into my next question, but he did. There may be financial constraints but we certainly make an awful lot of contributions to any number of groups in the NWT, one of which is the Aboriginal Pipeline Group. I would like to know from the Minister whether or not there is a policy that exists that guides the GNWT when they make contributions to organizations such as the APG, to organizations who are involved in a resource development. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to use my Member’s statement today to address the issue of long-term financial stability for the NWT. I believe we can partially achieve this goal through equity investments in our resources and resource development.

Currently, as Members are well aware, our revenues come from two main sources: about 75 percent from the federal government through the territorial funding formula and the bulk of the remaining 25 percent from taxes.

Well, these sources fluctuate sometimes quite a bit from one year to the next, making it difficult to budget for our yearly expenditures...

Thanks for the explanation. I guess it just begs the question as to why the budgeted figure for utilities didn’t start with the $800,000 in it. I will just leave that as a comment. I don’t think the question needs an answer. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you for the explanation. I’m not sure I totally followed it. Does that mean, then, that the department budgeted in 2008-09 for utility costs which they knew they were going to go over? That kind of is what I thought I heard Mr. Kalgutkar say, that the budgeted amount was too low and they knew that going into their budget in 2008-09, so they had to take the reserve and put it in there before they ever started. If that is the explanation, I’d like that confirmed. Thank you.