Bob Bromley

Is that for planning or is that for actual construction of the infrastructure? Thanks.

My last comment is fairly specific. We’ve had, this fiscal year, an increase of about 60 to 70 percent from our main estimates to current estimates in our large capital, and about a 700 percent increase in our information technology, a smaller total amount, but maybe could I just get a brief explanation of what those are about, those increases?

That’s great, so I guess I can expect that the Minister will be bringing that forward to committee. When might we expect that strategy for dealing with this long-term care issue, as we know the numbers are increasing rapidly?

Okay. Thank you. So that’s on the numbers. In terms of what the strategy is to meet those, obviously, we need to be starting yesterday on that, and I see in the budget today we’re making some significant progress. I know that there are partners out there like Avens who are critical partners and provide leadership, but certainly not every community has that capacity. I’m just wondering: In terms of where are we at on putting a strategy in place to address that need, given that we know it’s going to be some big number, do we have that strategy yet and where are we at in its implementation? Thank...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions are to the Minister of Environment and Natural Resources. I would like to chat about fracking in the Sahtu. This week the Minister of ITI explained that it was the responsibility of ENR to look at the social and environmental impacts of fracking.

I am wondering: How is our ENR Minister working to ensure that fracking projects such as those being promoted by ITI are sustainable? By sustainable, I mean that we are looking at the three pillars of sustainability: economic, social and environmental. Mahsi.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I just wanted to follow up with Ms. Bisaro’s comment about the status of this budget staying the same since 2000 at $28 million. I think operational costs have certainly become a challenge and I know the Minister was dead on with that, but unfortunately, I think the expenses, general expenses, part of that equation means that infrastructure expense costs have escalated quite considerably at the same time. For example, I think our Minister of Finance has told us that we used to spend $75 million in our capital budget and we were happy to do that when we could achieve it...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today I continue with lessons learned from our fracking tour and applying those lessons to the North. Too much of anything can be a bad thing. Fracking is about too much of many things, too much of so much that I made a list:

too many trucks on too many roads;

too many wells flaring too much gas;

too much fresh water going down a well and too much dirty water coming back up;

too many pipelines, oil pipelines, gas pipelines, freshwater pipelines and produced water pipelines,

too many workers coming in from faraway places; and driving it all,

too much money.

This is what...

Thank you, Madam Chair. My last one. I see 159, according to my math, major retrofits proposed in this draft budget. First of all, I’m assuming these will include the attempt to bring our standards up to AEDG or as close as we can get. What proportion would this put us at now for all our units, given all the other renos we’ve done AEDG? If that’s not handy, maybe the Minister could provide that at some point in time. Thank you.

Thanks for that from the Minister. A couple of other things, there’s been a lot of interest expressed on small houses, especially for seniors. Where are we at on that, Madam Chair? Are some of the units being proposed here small houses for seniors, or small units? Thank you.

It just seems that we are more than doubling our budget here and where is that money coming from?