Bob Bromley

Thank you. How many devolution positions are we decentralizing?

Mr. Chair, I appreciate that information. That is the larger one there, $131 million. Could I just find out what amount we are putting into junior kindergarten this year? Thank you.

Thanks to Mr. Kalgutkar. I’m not even going to go there. Thank goodness my payments on the house go down when I pay them off. The Mackenzie Valley fibre optic link, I see we spent $7 million. Have we laid an inch of line yet? Thank you.

Thanks for that information. I’m willing to hold further until we get to that page. I would like to comment, however, that this process is going on without Members being fully informed and having any opportunity for input in this major piece of work. So much for the government’s claim to be consulting with anybody. Mahsi.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Just before Christmas the governments of Canada and the NWT accepted the recommendations of the Mackenzie Valley Environmental Impact Review Board regarding the plan to deal with the arsenic at Giant Mine in Weledeh. Today I rise to recognize their decision and point out that this is an example of the current regulatory system functioning in the way it should, functioning in a way that produces the best result for people.

The Government of Canada and GNWT finally have a plan for Giant Mine that makes sense. Previously, they claimed that the frozen block method was the...

I appreciate that, and that’s exactly what we had our meetings with the outfitters about, and they were asking if we could ask this question, so I’m asking the Minister, would he be willing to have those discussions? The Minister raises a good point that the reclamation is part of this. There are some environmental liabilities out there and so on, and perhaps there’s another department that’s taking on significant work here, but I think we are talking about helping these businesses which, again, we encouraged, minimize their losses and minimize the impact on the environment and so on.

Given that we’ve got 34 days left before this office would take over this responsibility, is there an interim plan? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Really, I just wanted to say I’m happy to see the continuation and, in some cases, expansions in some of the support here, specifically that Tourism Diversification Program. I think we’re having some successes in that area and I’d welcome any evaluation that the department has done on the support provided to date.

I think the sport hunt outfitter and marketing support, I’m assuming this is support to help keep some of the outfitters alive over time, a rough period in our history here and I appreciate the continuation of that.

Finally, the little bump-up there, recognition...

I know we’re collecting $10,000 in fees from the petroleum industry here, an amazingly small amount. At the same time, I suppose we’re now proposing to subsidize this same industry, the richest corporations in the world, with millions of taxpayer dollars from GNWT funds. That’s just an observation.

Thanks for that additional information. I recall in the 16th Assembly we had a similar sort of thing. Now, we may not have had the number of taxpayers go down, and it sounds like that’s part of what’s happening here. But we certainly did have that same sort of proportionate decrease. I believe it was in, actually, corporate income tax if I remember rightly. Are there further adjustments that will be made to these numbers? Is this just the update and we can expect more updates?