Bob Bromley

I might add, Mr. Speaker, the most expensive power in the world is what this Power Corporation is producing, and this Minister is letting this go, passing up what other opportunities we have missed like this.

The Minister will be happy to learn that despite government failure and the best efforts of NTPC to stand and watch this exciting opportunity evaporate, Borealis GeoPower is still prepared to move forward with this project without the federal subsidy.

My question is: Is this government now prepared to move forward and capitalize on this still available and valuable opportunity? Mahsi.

It sounds good. No evidence. Will we be talking about this before the 18th Assembly, or are we leaving the budget to the 18th Assembly?

A power purchase agreement from the Power Corporation was a condition for the federal funding available. Despite a three-year window in which to provide the necessary power purchase agreement was not forthcoming from NTPC. The government has said that it provided the terms for an agreement, knowing full well that this falls short of the requirement for the PPA. This failure cost residents, businesses and government millions of dollars in the loss of local jobs. Borealis was willing to shoulder all financial risks.

Why did the government not direct this fully owned subsidiary to provide a power...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just a quick follow-up to that. I see we have spent quite a bit on this last year and we’re planning to spend more. Whereabouts are we? Are we on budget with this or is the budget increasing on this project?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today I rise to acknowledge and congratulate Weledeh constituent Zhalaani Drygeese-Yelle on her recognition as Top Young Trapper in the North Slave region under the Genuine Mackenzie Fur program.

---Applause

It’s excellent to see her here in the gallery. Apologies for not recognizing Zhalaani. Perhaps her family is here too.

Zhalaani, a resident of Detah and in Grade 12, will graduate this year, but she is also learning about the traditional skills of her culture from her parents. Zhalaani’s parents believe in teaching their children both traditional and modern skills. A...

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...