Floyd Roland

Mr. Speaker, under 23(j), once again, I’ve been accused of uttering a falsehood. The Member said that the banks are solely responsible. You can look at Hansard. I’ve not said that. So my point of order is that the Member is, again, accusing me of lying to this Assembly. In fact, lying to this Assembly is as good as putting my head on a platter.

Mr. Speaker, I want Members to be aware of the insinuations being made here. In fact, adding wording that has not been said and I have not said…. I’m speaking to this piece. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, we must be careful what we say in this House. I mean, some Members have come up with their own figure of what this potentially costs. The $242 million figure is someone else’s math work. What we’ve put on the table is the total amount of $165 million. The tolls will pay a significant portion of that. As the act itself identified, we would be taking funds from the ice crossing and the ferries going up to close to $2 million. The FMB of the day agreed to a further extension of $2.28 million as a ceiling for putting this in, based on the dollar values of when that agreement was put...

A number of these travel projects would fall under the department’s small capital allocations which would be bulked into a larger number but has come through in this as well for the detail. Environment and Natural Resources does patrol for illegal hunting, looking for potential spills in areas where work is occurring. They do have some older equipment that needs to be replaced from time to time. For specific details on this project, or this asset, I ask that we go to the Minister responsible, Mr. Miltenberger.

This section being “Capital” is actually for construction or infrastructure being put in place — for example, the bridges. The winter road construction would fall under O&M.

Yes, Mr. Chairman. To my right is Ms. Kathleen LeClair, the secretary to the FMB, and to my left is Mr. Sandy Kalgutkar, the director of budgeting and evaluation.

Mr. Speaker, to the amended motion.

We in cabinet agree with the principle of the amended motion as well as with the principles of the UN declaration.

One of the things we should recognize is that when you look at this work, in Canada itself and, in fact, in the Northwest Territories, as Ms. Bisaro stated, we already hold in high regard our relationship with aboriginal peoples in the country and again in the Northwest Territories. Look at the makeup of this Legislative Assembly. It’s just an example of the relationship we have with the people and the land here in the Northwest Territories.

We...

Mr. Speaker, yes, I do.

Mr. Speaker, the Ministers would work through their department, if it is work on behalf of the department — and I’d have to get a specific example. But through a department, the department can initiate that activity from direction given by the Minister, so I don’t get to review all of those areas for consulting contracts.

Mr. Chairman, the motion calls for the elimination of this one project. We have to remind ourselves of the fire season. The further north you go, there may still be some snow, but in the southern parts of the Territory the environment does dry out sooner. If we start dealing with this later on in the season — in fact, we will be in full summer season, and we put crews in place the 1st of May — this area can be considered as an ounce of prevention, in a sense. If we are unable to properly see where lightning strikes are hitting in the Northwest Territories, it delays the reaction time for those...

I have to go to the Minister Responsible for ENR for detail on that project.