Bob Bromley

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I rise to acknowledge and congratulate my constituent Michael Gilday, a member of the four-person team achieving a new world record in the qualifying rounds of the men’s 5,000-metre speed skating relay.

Competing at the International Skating Union World Cup in Calgary this weekend, Michael Gilday and his teammates, Charles Hamelin, Francois Hamelin and Oliver Jean, set the record at six minutes and 32.909 seconds. The team finished with a Bronze Medal in the final 5,000-metre relay race Sunday night. Gilday also finished Friday with a Silver Medal in the 1,000-metre...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In honour of Small Business Week, I want to salute the local enterprises that are the basis of a stable and sustainable economy. Weledeh riding, as Members know, is not only the birthplace of Yellowknife’s small businesses, it remains the most diverse and vibrant small business centre of all ridings.

How so? It’s the cradle of our local aviation industry, today including Air Tindi, Arctic Sunwest, and individual operators. East Arm Freighting continues the vital barging business while Aurora Geoscience serves the mineral exploration industry. Deton Cho provides general...

I appreciate the Minister’s offer. I wonder, if he could, what he would suggest to move this forward. Obviously, the community is concerned about it. I’ve brought it to the Minister’s attention and the Minister agrees that it is a concern. How can we get this done?

That’s it. I appreciate the Minister’s offer. Thank you.

That’s good. I think I’m finally seeing some light here. Does the Minister have any idea what the first bit of capital construction, what size of project we’re talking about here for ’14-15?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I didn’t hear a response to my question for a commitment to estimate the costs to government and the public. I’d still like that commitment. We clearly need to recognize our situation.

I’d like to know, in recognizing that the federal government has abandoned Kyoto and so on, can the Minister tell us what efforts he is making in partnership with other provincial, territorial and Aboriginal governments to push forward combined subnational efforts and I’d also like that commitment. Mahsi.

For several years we pushed for Public Works and Services to examine this division with the potential or the possibility of incorporating a wood pellet purchase, transport and storage distribution system. I was very pleased to see the department actually conduct research on that question and produce a fairly positive report on it. In the report they detailed that wood pellet heat in almost all of the roaded communities was in the order of 50 to 60 percent of fuel oil cost, so a huge savings to be had. Although there were other roaded communities, winter-roaded communities, where the most...

Thanks to the Minister for those remarks. The Minister certainly is dead on there. We are doing lots of things. I think we are one of the most progressive jurisdictions.

Of course, we also have some of the greatest costs. I appreciate the Department of Transportation’s frankness in responding to some of my questions about what those costs are, recognizing that those are only partial costs if they are conservative, admittedly conservative costs, that they ignore the costs to the public and so on and that those costs are accelerating year to year.

I want to talk a little bit about the context...

Very briefly just to follow up to, again, that interesting series of questions and discussion. If I could ask the Minister to commit to providing committee with the anticipated savings over the next three years in deferred maintenance and that result from buildings planned to be torn down. Also, an estimate of the rate of increase of deferred maintenance on an annual basis so that we can actually try and grapple with the question that Mr. Dolynny raised. That would be useful. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It’s a great pleasure to welcome a couple of visitors from Norway: Marthe Svensson and Gaute Svensson and their son Edgar. They may be back and forwards from the lobby there. Also, John Stephenson, a constituent of Weledeh. The visitors from Norway are, of course, staying in Weledeh. Mahsi.