Floyd Roland

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This area of caribou management, the information provided by the department in this area is the monitor of…(inaudible)…distribution movements through the use of satellite collars. There’s 20 of them being identified, public information and education programs, an inventory compliance activity in consultation with community stakeholders for a total of $525,000. It’s an area that has come up as a result of the monitoring that has been going on and the decline in the count that has happened and the environment that we work under with our co-management bodies. The...

Mr. Chairman, if the decision is to go back to a renovation, then this money would be an investment and knock down that overall amount. So if we’ve gone back to not a new facility but a renovated facility, then this is an investment that we can continue to build on. Ultimately, though, the lifecycle of that building would only be increased to approximately 20 years for a full lifecycle renovation. The decision has been made to proceed to a new building because of the dollar figure. If it is the direction of this House that that doesn’t happen, instead a renovation happens, then we would look...

Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, there are quite a number of reasons why there is a large carryover. As I stated earlier, we’ve increased the amount of dollars available to communities for Municipal and Community Affairs, as well as the funding through the northern trust that was established. That is a lot of money now available to communities that some communities were not prepared for. If you look at a lot of this, whether it’s a pool remediation or a community office upgrade, water treatment plant upgrade, there are a lot of projects that aren’t high in value but they still require...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, as I stated earlier, there have been numerous options looked at and reviewed, presented to the department for decision and working with the community. The community wanted for quite some time to keep the facility and have it renovated. When we looked at those options for renovation and the value for money, it was felt that the best investment is for a new facility. That decision was made. Unfortunately from the timeline the initial discussion started to where we are now, we have been burning the candle at both ends, so to speak, and are now in a position...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, yesterday the federal Minister of Finance, the Honourable James Flaherty, released the Report of the Expert Panel on Equalization and Territorial Formula Financing.

This report has important implications for the fiscal future of the Government of the Northwest Territories, GNWT, and for the residents of this territory. The expert panel was established by the federal government early in 2005 with a mandate to undertake an independent review and make recommendations on the allocation of the equalization and territorial formula financing programs. The...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, the negotiations that were concluded were the capital program. The negotiations for O and M were always ongoing and no conclusion has been brought to those. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Yes, Mr. Chairman, the client department has made a decision to replace this facility with a new facility. But as I stated, now the process would be required that it would go into the capital planning process that we have established, and then we would have to identify the money or make a decision to go to a leased facility once that is approved within the capital plan and business plan process. So the decision has been made to go to a new facility. Unfortunately, we're in a situation where we have to make the minimal code requirements to continue with this...

Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, the issue of gridlock, when we hit gridlock, if you talk to a number of departments they would say that we are already at that stage. The capital program we approve on an annual basis does not permit us to deal with all the requests departments put in. The process would work as we do our business planning and look at our capital program. The projects that would be approved by this Assembly, we would go back to the drawing board in the sense of a capital program that may have been approved. If there isn’t an actual contract tie to that project, it would...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, the work that’s been done with the fire marshal on continuing the occupancy for a minimum amount of time to get us to the situation where we would have a new facility in place, the required amount of work based on our estimates and in discussions with the fire marshal’s office as well as electrical inspectors is going to cost $3.5 million is our estimate. Whether or not we decide we are going to shut down other portions of the building, I am not sure what the impact would be on these estimates. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. In the area of the recovery being sought from CATSA, the department has identified the fact that most jurisdictions right now are having their difficulty accepting what CATSA has put forward as their amount. There seems to be a unified amount for these areas of O and M. I don’t believe many jurisdictions have agreed to that, so the discussion is ongoing. For further discussion around the CATSA discussions, we could probably have the Minister of Transportation provide a little more detail in that area in what has occurred in other jurisdictions as well. Thank you, Mr...