Floyd Roland

If the Member is talking about the Parkland report, that’s one thing — hired by the unions in the Northwest Territories to look at our numbers, come up with their assumptions and present those, in a sense, to question where we’ve come from as a government. I disputed those numbers. As the Member stated, we can both — the government and people out there — look at numbers, put them on a scale and say things are actually quite good.

Talk about the surplus. The surplus is a planned surplus so we can fund our capital programs. I’ve been saying that for years and I continue to say it. We need that...

Mr. Speaker, we have provided, in tabling the documents…. It’s the first time we’ve tabled this set of documents so that they’re available for public review. The Budget Address, as well, has a lot of information on the stats and where we’ve come from. It’s not a myth out there. We’ve had to build on.... Based on our assumptions and knowing that our formula financing going forward is fixed — there’s little adjustment to that, and our growth of expenditures is there — we’re going to run into problems. So we have to take action now, before we end up in a situation where all our flexibility is...

I think that question has been answered a number of times — of course, not to the satisfaction of the Member. I think all you have to do right now is drive through some of the business parking lots and look at all the tractor-trailer units parked in their parking lots, because they had to stock up for the closing of the ice crossing. Let’s ask the businesses that.

Mr. Speaker, I believe that would be good advice. We talk about it as Members. We shared that, our fiscal strategy, the years of projections, what goes into our projections and using our relationships. For example, our first year of budgeting comes from numbers we know we had from the federal government. We build on that with estimates. So yes, I can't see why we can’t put that in place.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I wish to advise Members that Hon. Michael McLeod will be absent from the House today to attend the Federal-Provincial-Territorial Ministers for Sport, Physical Activity and Recreation meeting in Victoria.

Mr. Speaker, first the question about the Building Canada Fund. The Building Canada Fund is capital dollars. It’s not O&M dollars. In a sense, it does help us, for example, to flow through more capital, because it’s cost-shared dollars. For example, the Kakisa River Bridge: it’s allowing us to invest in that area. The Yellowknife bypass road: cost-sharing with the City of Yellowknife and flowing through those dollars to meet theirs helps that project that wouldn’t have been on there before. There are a number of areas where it does save us some investment so that we can spread the capital out...

As the Member has laid it out, that is the scenario. The overall target is $135 million; $75 million of that $135 million was targeted for reinvestment in priorities of the Legislative Assembly. That number is affected by the fact that if we can achieve our reduction scenario.... And that’s somewhat limited. We were hoping to do that, and part of the discussion we had earlier on was that it is $135 million, but we want to reinvest the $75 million. It wouldn’t be $75 million up front in one year. We realize that it takes, as we pointed out, two years to actually see the net impact of some of...

We as a government have looked at our subsidy programs, and there are quite a number of them. When you look at the overall public housing package, the Territorial Power Support Program, the Seniors’ Fuel Subsidy, Income Support and some of these other investments, we haven’t had an updated review in comparison to other jurisdictions. We know that on a lot of fronts we do have a better program than quite a number of jurisdictions in Canada. But, again, we’d be willing to sit down with committee members to go through that and have a look at that initiative.

The area of energy is, as we hear in our communities, having a huge impact on the lives of individuals, holding people back from their potential. The cost of goods in our small stores in the communities is huge. I shared, for example, a trip to Paulatuk. One tomato in that Northern Store in Paulatuk was four dollars and some cents. I’m sure it would be similar in Lutselk’e. We see it, for example, when the ice crossings go out. The stores automatically bump up their prices, because the transportation costs are there.

One of the things we’re doing, that is ongoing, is, for example, the...

I give notice that on Monday, May 26, 2008, I will move that Bill 9, Supplementary Appropriation Act, No. 4, 2007–2008, be read for the first time.