Bob Bromley

That’s all I had. I guess I’ll be looking forward to when an appropriate time has gone by and there is enough substantial experience with this program to getting an update through committee. I appreciate the Minister’s remarks.

Okay, so this is obviously a substantial fund. How current are we in terms of knowing what our environmental liabilities are? I imagine we’re moving steadily towards a routine sort of assessment and so on. Are we fairly current on those or are we still catching up with today’s world in that respect?

Just in respect to land use plans which are part of the implementation process after settlement, where are we at? I know we got pretty close with the Sahtu. Has that been finalized? If we could just get a little update on the various regions on where we’re at with the land use plans. Thank you.

So these are subsidies in addition to the territorial power subsidy?

I know there are certainly lots of issues on the custody aspect of children across the Northwest Territories. There is very clear, new thinking that the emphasis needs to be in place to keep children associated with their families somehow.

In terms of a good result here, is this office helping children stay integrated in a healthy and safe way with their families, recognizing the issues that are being faced here? I think that’s the overall intent of our Child and Family Services Act review and so forth, in which Justice plays a big role.

Mr. Chairman, if you look at the third paragraph, the second last line. The Environmental Liability Fund.

I think that’s it. I’m sure most of all the unsettled land claims people would like to see these things settled so we can get on with other priorities, but this is a priority and I appreciate the work the department’s doing here, and I hope we can make progress on these files. That’s all I had.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I’m just interested in the progress report on the offices of the children’s lawyer and how this is working out. I believe it’s a new position. Maybe the Minister could refresh my memory on when we implemented this and how that program is working out. Thank you.

Okay, thank you. I see that the last year we contributed $10.6 million to the general rate application. That is a subsidy, I believe, to electricity rates and that’s dropping to $3.5 million for this proposed fiscal year. Will that continue in future years? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to just ask a little bit about the Environmental Liability Fund. It came up in one of the previous departments we were discussing, it might have been Public Works and Services, I can’t remember now, or Transportation. Maybe I could just start by getting clarification on what this is, how much is in the fund if it is a set amount, and how it’s managed to meet the needs. I know that environmental liability can go from zip to a whole bunch in no time at all. How does it work to meet that sort of volatile need?