Bob Bromley

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.

Mr. Chair, a couple of things. I certainly will be supporting the motion. I would like to note, as well, that some existing daycares will be in trouble as a result of losing four-year-olds to the government JK Program. Younger children that they are left with require a higher ratio of caregivers, so some daycare facilities will certainly become uneconomic and will have to close, leaving parents stranded and unable to work.

My second point is there is an important caveat here and that is this House has already directed the Minister to investigate universal daycare along the models of Quebec and...

Thanks for the additional information on the Mackenzie Valley fibre optic link. This is a project that I think everybody supports and we’d love to see it get done as expeditiously and efficiently as possible. Are we expecting to spend more this fiscal year once we do have all of this information in? I assume that would be through a supp. Thank you.

So it sounds to me like at least 50 percent of this housing cost should be derived from the devolution implementation dollars, obviously, especially given that these devolved positions generally have bodies with them, whereas our vacant positions don’t.

Just on the Northwest Territories Power Corporation general rate application business, I see our subsidies; exceptional subsidies are dropping while the cost of living associated with electricity is soaring through the roof, as people know. I believe close to 30 percent in the last few years increase in our electricity rates, our subsidies are...

Mr. Chair, I guess maybe I will go somewhere else here for a minute and maybe come back to that.

What I’m hearing from people in the field, so to speak, that are delivering programs related to this sort of thing, I’m looking at early childhood development and so on, there’s a great concern as I think we have already heard that attention will be…because there’s not extra funding being provided for this, attention will be taken away from those with special needs and other categories of students that require a particular amount of attention. They tell me that really it’s not so big a deal in the...

Thank you. So we’ve spent $7 million thinking about it. Do we have an estimate yet on the total costs for this project?

Thanks for that response. It’s obviously because of devolution that this is happening. I know the Minister is claiming that we’re being very efficient with these dollars, but here we are not using the money that was intended for this sort of expense.

How can the Minister justify not using the surplus devolution implementation dollars to supply market housing in our communities that is clearly the result of decentralization of devolved positions from the government?