Bob Bromley

Mr. Chair, I realize these special warrants are partly catch-up and partly projection, so you can end up with a surplus despite the bigger budget, so $18 million and $21 million and these are well above the set amounts for the annual budget. I am just wondering: Is there a trend in what’s happening with our fire seasons? Are we aware of any trends with our neighbouring jurisdictions, Alaska, Yukon, or our northern provinces? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today my questions are based on learning that in North Dakota, workers pay income taxes to the state of North Dakota regardless of where they reside. I’d like to direct my questions to the Minister of Finance exploring our situation. Early in the previous Assembly, we learned that we were losing about $300 million per year to high salary workers flying in to work in the NWT mines from other provinces.

Would the Minister have any update on how much this figure is currently for mine workers and what additional we are losing now for oil and gas workers?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Would the Minister happen to know what the last two or three years total cost expenditures were for fire suppression?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I, too, would like to recognize all of the winners of the Culture and Heritage Awards today. Congratulations to them and, particularly in the House today, members of the Yellowknife Choral Society, some of the members, and I know Constantina Tsetsos is there, a resident of Weledeh, as well as Lorne Gushue and Ruth McLean, Margo Nightingale, I don’t know if Margaret Peterson made it or not. So congratulations, and I don’t know if Jennifer Young is there. I can’t see everybody behind me, but she is one of the co-founders of the Yellowknife group Face to Face. It’s a...

Have we been provided with a report on what we found with the other research with the previous dollars that have been spent on this file?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. People across the NWT are concerned about this government’s direction. I can’t help but agree. Many have observed a distressing alignment with the approach of our federal government under its present leadership. Government communications clearly reveal it doesn’t care what Members think or what the public thinks. A recent example is the surprising revelation that despite a 60 percent increase in our debt limit last year, our Finance Minister has initiated actions to seek an even higher debt limit. Not only no debate, but not even bothering to tell the elected...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just a quick question. So we’re saving this because of efficiencies realized through our energy saving measures. What period of time is this for and would we know how many facilities this has been provided from? I’m trying to get a sense of what this means of all the work we’ve been doing. Thank you.

Okay, and thanks for that information. There are a couple of big costs there, for sure. Now, we’re just starting this, I guess, with the liquid natural gas. Can we expect that these total energy costs will remain higher like this and we can expect additional requests or that our budgets will be bigger for Housing Corporation utilities in those areas? Thank you.

So just to confirm, will this take us to the end of the fiscal year, the implementation date of April 1st, or are we spending more than the $26-something million to do this work. Thank you.

I think it falls under that be careful what you ask for. This is the sort of thing that many governments are pursuing now, to the cost of their residents and especially to the cost of local sustainability, and that’s why I raised this question. I will be voting against this bill.