Bob Bromley

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. This past weekend I attended the second NWT Wellness Conference at Sir John Franklin High School, and joined my colleagues, Ms. Bisaro and the Premier, for a tour there. While the Premier may not be known for his flexibility in this House, you should have seen him in the yoga workshop. I had no idea the human body could do things like that. But the Premier was not the only one who put a lot of effort into this event.

There were plenty of dedicated volunteers and sponsors from the local business community, non-government organizations, talented care providers, and...

Yes, just to finish that off, Mr. Chair. Thank you to the Minister. Did the communities receive the same funding this year as they did last year, or did they receive the full amount last year, and are we committed, are these long-term programs now, or are we still trying to portray these as pilot projects that nobody is going to invest in?

A huge disappointment here, obviously. This is molasses at 40 below. The committee has been clear that we want these on-the-ground community programs in place. So, based on what I heard, if I heard it accurately, extremely disappointing.

As we know, last year at this time, when we looked at the budget, the money had not been delivered to those communities, or perhaps it was delivered during the week that we were discussing it. So within a few weeks they had to spend all that money, probably frantically and inefficiently. So, again, I’m not impressed and I think this department needs some...

Thanks to the Minister. Very briefly, a comment, this will be my last comment hopefully on ECD, early childhood development. The premise that junior kindergarten is the way to go rather than focussing on zero to three, I know the Minister is aware that this is a contention here. Particularly on the claim that because services for zero to three age classes are fragmented, is a great leap and highly debatable, huge assumptions made there and I totally disagree with that. I think we are missing the boat. There is little evidence that the issues we are seeing can be addressed through junior...

Thanks to the Minister. I’d like to respond to that. Tar sands ponds that leak six million litres of contaminated tailings per day into the Athabasca River, steamed crude oil bubbling up through northern Alberta wetlands in multiple sites, coal mine tailings ponds collapsing. That is the record of the Alberta Energy Regulator in just the last six months.

Do we really grow responsible capacity, as the Minister says, by bringing so-called experts with such a poor record and pro-industry bias into our regulatory system? Why did we not simply continue with the National Energy Board? Mahsi.

Thank you. This is obviously related to the internal auditing and so on as well. I’m just wondering if we know what those issues are that have caused the Minister to suggest that this should be reviewed by the program review office.

Yes, thanks. Sorry. The question was: How are they related and how do they work together? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are for the Minister of ITI. I would like to follow up on his statement from earlier today. We have just recently learned that ITI will be taking over as oil and gas regulator as of April 1st. The previous regulator was the National Energy Board, a public board – a public board – with a mandate to ensure that all oil and gas development was in the national interest. As this is just a few weeks away, I wonder if the Minister can tell me what the mandate of the oil and gas regulator will be. Mahsi.

Mr. Chair, I see that this office seems to have a role in collections. I am wondering if the comptroller general’s office does have a function in the administration or collection of the payroll tax. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Again, just to be fully accurate here, what Mr. Kalgutkar meant, I think, was that this will catch us up to the point where we will continue to subsidize at $11 million to enable the Power Corporation to do their business. I guess I’ll leave it at that. The will of committee and interest of committee and having those dollars moved from subsidies into more efficient ways of addressing the cost of living for our residents has once again been ignored. I just want to make that clear with this.