Bob Bromley

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I’m just wondering, I see for Detah/Ndilo some major retrofits, but I’m wondering: is there a schedule for providing new public housing in Detah/Ndilo other than this fiscal year? I was disappointed not to see any there, and for Yellowknife, as per our earlier discussion.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I appreciate the Minister’s commitment. I realize that despite the fact that I’ve been talking about this for over a year, that this has just been dropped into this Minister’s lap and I appreciate that commitment.

To be failsafe, governments have learned securities held must be in the form of bankable instruments such as cash or irrevocable letters of credit. Other instruments such as surety bonds are basically promises to pay. I note that the form of security is missing for Dominion Diamond $42 million environmental security listed in the tabled document.

After the...

Mr. Speaker, how can you allow the responder to only answer to $6 million out of $176 million here? I’m wondering why the Minister has failed to answer that question. I’m perplexed here.

Federal failures to collect securities such as this are costing the Canadian public $8 billion. In addition to hundreds of millions in failed securities with this government, Dominion Diamonds have baulked at a condition proposed by the Wek’eezhii Land and Water Board to include a 90-day requirement for compliance with any revised water board security requirements. This, apparently, is also the position of the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. This week is Small Business Week in the Northwest Territories. Small business contributes much more than revenue and services to communities; they strengthen the social fabric and cultural identity of the places we call home. They are strong sponsors and volunteers.

Yellowknife is blessed with entrepreneurs who provide services, goods and employment enriching our lives and being good neighbours. Weledeh itself is rich with businesses that produce healthy ripples throughout the community. The arts, recycling, outdoor guiding and recreation, clothing, furniture...

I think I will leave it at that. I think again that is something that committee might want to talk about, is what the rules are here, if there are any, in terms of transfer of operational funds. This is a stand-alone cost, albeit it is software and we buy lots of software, but it is a stand-alone cost within Finance and that’s quite a significant contribution from operations, presumably in the Department of Finance, to this project. So I think, again, it could stand a little discussion in committee so we’re doing this with full cognizance. That’s all I have. Thank you.

So now this project is up to $225,000, putting those two figures together, and $175,000 being moved over from operations in ’15-16. I don’t know what our operations budget is, but is that the normal course for capital purchases? I know it is possible to transfer between, but I thought it was usually sort of a supplementary thing as opposed to 80 percent of the cost.

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thanks for that response. I think it will be very interesting to have a discussion at some point on what our portfolio of investments is. This may not be the right forum for it, but it’s something I don’t recall. Perhaps our committee on Gov Ops has had that, but that might be an interesting discussion.

Just on the other project, I see it’s a completion of the implementation of the PeopleSoft financial…(inaudible)…sourcing and so on. Are we on budget with that? I don’t see a prior year expenditure on this, although I know we seem to invest untold millions into this...

That’s all I had. I’ll look forward to that detail. It was the increase from the $450,000 to $1.031 million. A substantial increase there, 115 percent, roughly. I appreciate the Minister’s offer. That’s all I had for general comments.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I don’t disagree with many of the concerns that are being brought up, but I am having a hard time shoe horning such comments into a discussion of the capital budget with the Department of Finance given that we will have these discussions in another forum at another time, and we can’t make any decisions here. Although I do have to reply to a couple of things that I heard the Minister say.

MLAs that lay out the priorities, certainly MLAs don’t lay out the priorities during this government. Albeit, it’s probably because this side of the House has chosen not to use their...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions are for the Minister of the Environment. Just a couple of questions on the cost of the Giant Mine Remediation Project now that the environmental assessment has finally been completed.

On August 11, 2014, the responsible Ministers, including our Minister, finally approved the measures coming out of the review report, and fundamental changes were made including, for example, research and development into a more permanent solution and a community-based oversight body. Those are great things, and I thank the Minister for any role he had in getting that done.

My...