Bob Bromley

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I seek unanimous consent to conclude my statement.

---Unanimous consent granted

I think I will leave it at that. I think that the concern is clear. We will accept new information.

I appreciate that offer and I’ll take Mr. Kalgutkar up on that. I think the main point is we need to be on top of that, because these dollars will disappear at the end of this fiscal year. It’s not usually, or often at least, that we have the opportunity to carry them over and this is sort of that last kick at getting those spent in a productive way. So we need to be on top of that and I appreciate that offer.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just a quick question. I understand that the stimulus dollars cannot be carried over beyond this coming March 31st. If that’s true, I’m wondering, do we have assurance that those dollars will be completely expended this fiscal year. Thank you.

It sounds like a pretty reasonable investment: $8 million in return for a million of somebody else’s money. So I appreciate that.

On the final one, the Department of Transportation looking to carry over funding. I’ve heard for two years about research that’s supposed to be done related to climate change and highways. I’ve never seen any results on that and I’m wondering what have we learned so far for the research dollars we have spent. Is this additional money or ongoing money going to be also dedicated to the climate change research with regard to highway construction maintenance? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I’d just like to add a little bit to this discussion. I’m wondering if, well, obviously the costs are going up. I think earlier on in this Assembly we raised this pretty straightforwardly and the estimated cost there was $4 million to $5 million at that time. So this is something that’s going up in cost. I’m also very sensitive to the Finance Minister’s recognition of our current fiscal situation. Is there any room for managing this to the point where the one-time cost of finally getting it done would be more modest? Are there some time-related leave sorts of issues...

Yes, thank you, Mr. Speaker. Just totalling these things up, that’s almost another million dollars. So we’re pretty close to an additional $10 million of subsidies this year and this is in addition to our apparently now routine at 10 to 12 million dollars per year and this is what I mean about we’re not really reducing costs and we’re removing options for services for our people. So I’d like to ask the Premier, during the life of this Assembly what community will actually have an electricity system with reduced costs. What community? Even one community.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, I want to begin today by offering some general remarks on how the Cabinet is engaging this Assembly in developing its responses, how the government is engaging the review process, the Joint Review Project report itself, the report itself, the content of the government’s public statements to date on the Joint Review Project and my general concerns.

While this Cabinet has heard my process concerns in a number of statements, questions and as reported in the media, I want to restate my basic thoughts on the role of the Assembly in developing the government response...

Thank you. I appreciate the Premier’s commitment on that. Obviously the recommendations that our current report provides does very little to reduce the actual costs of power, which is what is ultimately required. You know, if we just keep putting the costs behind the scenes, what that does is remove the options we have for doing other things, providing services and other things of value to our people. So we can’t keep doing that. When will we actually see real reductions in the actual costs of electricity so that real savings can be provided? Thank you.

Thanks for the comments from the Minister. That provides some assurance that we are focusing here. I’d like to know how the NWT Water Strategy will, in fact, guide us in responding to these sorts of things. We put a lot of money, time, resources and so on into that and I’ve been happy to participate in that. I think it’s a good project. I look forward to seeing the final document, but how will that guide us in responding to projects such as this? Thank you.