Floyd Roland

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Supplementary Appropriation Act, No. 3, 2007-2008, requests authority for additional appropriations of $21.305 million for appropriation expenditures and $7.951 million for capital investment expenditures in the 2007-2008 fiscal year.

To clarify the contents of the bill, of the $21.305 million in operations expenditure appropriations requested in the supplementary appropriation, approximately $1.9 million is offset by federal revenues. That includes $1.4 million for municipal rural infrastructure funding.

Of the $7.951 million in capital investment expenditures requested...

I would have to get the details from the Minister on that piece.

Mr. Speaker, one of the areas of building on the relationship we have in the Northwest Territories between the Government of the Northwest Territories itself and the aboriginal leadership is a commitment to sit down on a quarterly basis to discuss issues of common interest where we can move forward together and build on that. That process we started in November and are following up, potentially having a meeting at the end of this month or early March, if we can hold the parties together.

We are committed to a process that we will formalize, and work with our regional aboriginal leadership and...

Mr. Chairman, again, the departments would have to justify some practices in the process or actions that would be looked at in trying to achieve bringing that grouping to the public service. Again, the estimates have been looked at in the past. It should fluctuate depending on the criteria that they use, the existing pension plan.

The way we pay employees and contributions would see us with an increase in expenditures beyond this amount and it would then be incorporated into an ongoing amount. One benefit would be that they would all be N.W.T. employees at that point.

This is an agreement that flows over a five-year period. The total amount of that was in the neighbourhood of $16 million. This flows through to a number of communities. For that information, it was split as well between tax-based and non–tax-based communities: 45 per cent to tax-based communities and 55 per cent to non–tax-based communities is the way it’s worked out.

We don't identify, for example, what tax-based communities spend their money on. They have their plan to work on. As well, we have a new deal process we’ve worked out with a number of other communities.

The Minister of Municipal...

Mr. Speaker, I move, seconded by the Hon. Member for Thebacha, that Bill 2, Supplementary Appropriation Act, No. 3, 2007-2008, be read for the first time. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The total of the amount we had to pay out this fiscal year might be included in our self-financing portion, which would be our deductible. We’d get that information if this would be something we could get reimbursed or if we’re still under our own deductible limit where we have to pay our own costs at this stage.

Mr. Chairman, this area is indeed popping up — the existing pension plan — as their plan is different from the G.N.W.T. plan. The employees there are in fact employees of the Hay River health authority.

There have been ongoing discussions over the last number of years of looking to pull that authority into the G.N.W.T. The decision hasn’t been made in that area, but work has been looked at. They would have to estimate the full cost of bringing employees into the G.N.W.T. It would have to follow a business planning process.

Mr. Chairman, this is an example of when dollars are approved late in a fiscal year. Getting a program implemented and available sometimes can prove more challenging than initially anticipated. Luckily, today we have the Minister of ITI who can give more details as to what the Member has raised with his concerns.

Mr. Speaker, as we are aware, any new highway construction outside of the existing infrastructure that we have right now falls into the area of the federal government. They have kept up that area of authority, so we would say that has to be looked at. That’s why we are talking about a partnership and having the federal government come to the table.

We believe this should also deal with the issue of Arctic sovereignty by having key infrastructure in place, by building on the economic development opportunities in the North and by keeping communities sustainable. This is how we can help the...