Bob Bromley

Thanks to the Minister. I think that’s exactly what I wanted to hear. As we go down the road, the low-hanging fruit hopefully will be taken care of and some of our building practices will ensure that we have top grade and we don’t need to be retrofitting with the same degree of frequency. It would be nice to know that there is some thought being given to build for the more chewier problems we have along the way.

I brought this up once before and I don’t believe I got a response, so perhaps Mr. Guy would have the term I’m seeking here. There is an American engineer’s standard for energy. It’s...

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?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to follow up on my earlier Member’s statement with questions to the Minister for Education, Culture and Employment. During the last election campaign, the NWT Status of Women Council in the NWT asked all candidates the following: “If elected, would you commit to helping all communities in the NWT build affordable, quality, licensed child care facilities”? I will be tabling that later today.

I’m happy to report that candidates Bob McLeod, Glen Abernethy and Tom Beaulieu, and most of us on this side of the House made that commitment. The Minister himself did not...

Mr. Chair, I wasn’t even close. Maybe I can get an update on what happened with the Inuvik situation. I guess that is an airport that, because of the frequent temperature changes, gets moisture build-up and it was causing jets to slide and so on; scary stuff. What was the resolution on that issue? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I request permission to return to item number 5 on the Order Paper.

---Unanimous consent granted