Floyd Roland

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I wish to table the following document entitled Main Estimates 2008–2009, Volumes 1 and 2.

Document 37-16(2), Main Estimates 2008–2009, Volumes 1 and 2, tabled.

One thing I’ve said to all the Ministers who have lead roles on these initiatives is to make contact with standing committees to set up some times to do the presentations and briefings of information we have so we can get some feedback and further work on a number of scenarios. That’s going to be something we’ll need to work out between committees and Cabinet as well.

Mr. Speaker, that issue has come up. I’ve also asked some questions about that and about looking at, as a government, our interpretation of our obligations under our contracts, with the unions as well. Sometimes it’s just our direct interpretation of things. There are a number of cases where there are staff who work in the same area within the same department where one position was targeted; three positions became potentially affected. So we’ve got to look at that.

Again, this scenario has played out in a way where we definitely don’t want to be using the same processes and where we get a clear...

We are indeed looking at diesel communities and power production. The rate base right now.... Through the existing structure we deal with communities at a community rate–based structure scenario. I think we need to have that debate as Members of the Assembly.

For example, at the Association of Communities I spoke to the fact that how we treat the Power Corporation as the sole shareholder in the Northwest Territories has to be reviewed in the sense of.... Right now we match everybody, as I said earlier, to the 700 kilowatt hours, but after that you pay a community rate base. Some communities...

Mr. Speaker, I as well have not just come into this environment. As I stated earlier, I’m very familiar with the process as a Regular Member, as a Minister and as Finance Minister in a previous government. That process has been followed. There’s always a glitch with the first budget of the Legislative Assembly. You can decide to either go ahead with the work that was done by a previous government, with some tinkering, or you can take control of it early on. We’ve decided to take control.

We’ve tried to mitigate the impact on employees. Again, I’ve heard from Members. Members said early on that...

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...