Floyd Roland

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, as laid out, the process we fall under when it comes to a natural disaster or a disaster in this area where a flood had occurred, the policy and the arrangement of the federal government is that they would cover 85 percent of the cost. Beyond that, normally, again, a person’s own household insurance there, that area we would expect would cover the rest of the loss in that area. In this case, as we were informed at the time and made the decision to support the initiative to cover the rest of the cost, is that this case would not have done us any positiveness...

I am pleased to introduce Bill 19, Supplementary Appropriation Act, No. 3, 2005-2006. This bill requests authority for additional appropriations of $31.994 million for operations expenditures and $1.189 million for capital investment expenditures in the 2005-2006 fiscal year.

The request for operations expenditures, net of offsetting revenues, exceeds the supplementary reserve reported in the 2006-2007 Main Estimates by $5 million. However, the GNWT will still remain within the guidelines set by the fiscal responsibility policy for the 2005-2006 fiscal year.

Major items included in this...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, the Minister of Health and Social Services may be able to provide more of that background as to the specific causes, or at least the best estimate under the department’s case, the causes for these type of increases. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Voytilla can provide that level of detail. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, the reference to the previous bill might have some impact on us. It wouldn’t be in those communities that are served by the petroleum products division. Where we get our fuel and bring it into the community that would have an impact on our schools and our health facilities in a sense that if we’ve got a better price, then that affects that community. Where we are in the communities that are serviced by the private sector, that would have no impact. Thank you

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As we stated, it would take us a few months to do our work where we feel we could be in a position to provide Members more information on whether we think we’ll have to make another adjustment for the 2006-2007 budget. As the normal process is, after year-end we’ll have to go through the normal works of our budgeting exercise to come up with year-end numbers and after that we’ll then be able to come back with the results of the 2005-2006 year. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Speaker, I move, seconded by the honourable Member for Weledeh, that Bill 18, Appropriation Act, 2006-2007, be read for the third time. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, as I stated earlier, we did provide departments relief through previous supplementary appropriations to cover their increased costs for I guess a certain time period where we’d come to a position where we had to increase our budgets without adjusting the long term. It was felt at the time that because of the volatility of the market, that we had to give it some time to see if, in fact, things were going to continue to climb or settle down. As we see it now, the prices did get very high there for a bit and have come down a certain degree, but we feel...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, this increase that we’re asking for here does cover the 2005-2006 fiscal year, but we have not made adjustments in the 2006-2007 fiscal year. After the work is done on reviewing this, doing some of the tracking of historical data there, we’ll have a better idea of where we think we’ll need to be and at that time come forward with a request for more funds if that’s the case. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. More just to the fact of the upgrades that are listed here. As I stated earlier, when we, as a government, get into leases for either office space or clinical space, when we initially enter those agreements and move in, we, as a government, still pay the cost for fitting them up for use by the departments. As well, in mid-term if we decide to change the use of that facility or put additional requirements for the use of that facility, we again are responsible for them. So that is not a change in the way we've done things about the leases we have in place to date.

I...