Bob Bromley

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have a couple of comments here. I understand that this money is for, I believe there’s office space that has been secured, but it’s for developing the office space. But this is for moving, transferring the Business Incentive Policy monitoring office from Yellowknife to Hay River and the motivation, according to our information, is a decentralization effort. But I’d just like to point out some of the fallacies here of the plan that this government is pursuing right now.

If you look at, in fact, the number of jobs per capita, Hay River, or the South Slave, has the highest...

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thanks to the Minister for his opening statement. I note we’re 32 percent carry-over. That’s a pretty high number. I believe if that’s the case, our capital budget from last year was about $225 million; $75 million, or about a third of that, was carried over. I know in the 16th Assembly we had a Deputy Minister’s Infrastructure Subcommittee that tried to focus on getting that number down. I think the lowest we reached was about 24 percent. Maybe I could get the Minister’s perspectives on this. This was a relatively modest capital budget compared to the capital...

I appreciate that information on the ongoing interest of the Minister there. I guess it doesn’t address my point, though, that when we know we are going to lapse from these large adjacent back projects, significant dollars that would be huge to the Detah road project, that we identify those early on and enable that Detah road project to go forward until the bountiful federal government comes forward with additional money. This really is the GNWT’s responsibility. Thank you.

I will look forward to what the Minister concludes on that one.

On the issue of emergency response, the worst situation would likely be a fire during the deconstruction, which would cause immediate downwind threats to human health. AANDC says there’s an emergency plan in place and warnings would be issued, but even if I heard a siren, I wouldn’t know what to do. Go inside? Listen to the radio? This information should be easy to communicate through ads and flyers delivered to homes.

Will the Minister again commit to contacting his partners and urging them to advertise and distribute detailed...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. My question was: What was the original budget for the reconstruction of Highway No. 4? I see we lapsed several million dollars and it’s being carried over and proposed here, but what was the original budget for the work that year?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are for the Minister for Environment and Natural Resources. Work is beginning, under the authority of a federal water licence, for the deconstruction of the roaster complex at the Giant Mine site, but I’ve heard that AANDC no longer has water resource officers in Yellowknife. Their water licence inspector positions are all vacant except for one in Inuvik.

Given the significant potential for environmental and human health impact from the Giant Mine roaster complex deconstruction – as we all know it’s full of arsenic trioxide and so on, 16 tonnes, I...

Thanks to the Minister. The other thing I’d like confirmation on is I understand that as a result of ATCON’s work and some mistakes they made or whatever, and their bankruptcy or pulling out of the project, there was a deficiency account established of about $13 million, and we are pulling from those funds the money to correct the work that’s needed to be corrected. Those are in addition to the $202 million, but it’s no cost to us. It’s a liability thing for ATCON, and that that amount is some part of that $13 million. Maybe the Minister can tell us about how much that is, if I’ve got that...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to focus on a difficult issue of seeking equity on parental custody arrangements to serve the best interests of children and parents caught up in divorce.

Data shows that when it comes time to determine custody arrangements in divorce, children are most often put in the exclusive custody of the mother. Statistics Canada indicates this is so in 80 percent of cases, with fathers at 7 percent of cases and shared custody in only 13 percent.

Our family courts make custody determinations on the basis of individual circumstances. The first priority must be to set...

I appreciate that offer and I’d like to be notified whether or not Education has confirmed things within the next two weeks. Thank you.

Thanks to the Minister for that response. The information that I received from our Minister indicates that AANDC has a heap of applications on file, so the potential is large for a lot more of these to be happening in the area that we’re trying to manage responsibly.

I appreciate hearing that the Minister has been in touch with the federal government on this and let him know that we’d like no further leases. I understand there is no response yet, but does the Minister agree that the next recreational leases granted on lands should, in fact, be decided by this government and not the federal...