Floyd Roland

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today I rise to get a message back to the people of Inuvik Boot Lake, my constituency, to inform them that I will not be putting my name forward in the next general election.

After much thought about the future and the work that I’ve done with the people of Inuvik, I feel it is time to let some younger, more energetic folks take a look at representing the fine community of Inuvik and the constituency of Inuvik Boot Lake. So I want to inform them that I will not be putting my name in, and wish the best for the future Assemblies of the Northwest Territories.

I’m sure I...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I thought I heard Public Works and Services or Transportation in his statement. It went on for a while, so I lost track.

Seriously, though, the issue of student hires has been one that this government has pushed and worked with the Department of Human Resources and all departments to improve on our numbers. The fiscal situation that we find ourselves in, the departments are doing their best to improve on that, but as we’ve heard from a number of Ministers, with our fiscal restraints departments have had to voluntarily squeeze in some areas. We’re still trying to match or...

The process that we use, number one is if there...and through the Department of Human Resources working through a number of categories and programs we have in place. For example, as individuals go through to college or university and they have specific training that could then be used by the department in some of the work we have scheduled for the summer season.

I’ll use last year for an example. We knew we were going to be tasking our people within Aboriginal Affairs and Intergovernmental Relations on the Northern Leaders’ Forum work on vision exercise, so we hired a couple of individuals...

Thank you. The estimation of, for example, 2.5 cents per kilowatt hour will impact residents of about $17 a month. We know it is an increase. We’ve tried to minimize the overall construction costs. One of the things we’ve done with the contract is risk sharing, and that may be able to lower the actual amount that we’ve budgeted and reduce the contingency, for example. So right now the process as it would work out is the construction would have to be completed and the overall budget looked at and the impact then passed on. So it would be beyond the life of the 16th Assembly. Well, it will have...

When this project was first proposed there was an estimate given to the PUB as this project had to be filed through them as well. The targeted impact was in the neighbourhood of up to between 1.5 to 2 cents per kilowatt hour. So that was budgeted prior to any changes in the budget. With this change we’re looking at 2.5 cents per kilowatt hour impact in this region. That does affect the rest of the communities because our Power Support Program, as we’ve changed it, is based on the Yellowknife rate. Thank you.

The issue with the health boards is that in trying to get the numbers, some have not been able to provide the additional numbers, so there may be some additional summer students out there that we’re not aware of. The other area is we’ve given them budgets to operate within and we’ve given them the authority to make those decisions, as well. We’ll try to get all the information so that we have fully updated numbers as we progress. I know the Department of Human Resources works with all departments to try to pool all those together and we’ll continue to do that.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today I rise to get a message back to the people of Inuvik Boot Lake, my constituency, to inform them that I will not be putting my name forward in the next general election.

After much thought about the future and the work that I’ve done with the people of Inuvik, I feel it is time to let some younger, more energetic folks take a look at representing the fine community of Inuvik and the constituency of Inuvik Boot Lake. So I want to inform them that I will not be putting my name in, and wish the best for the future Assemblies of the Northwest Territories.

I’m sure I...

I believe we will be there this summer, with a total of five between the two departments.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We have one that is hired and two positions that are in the process of being filled within Executive. Within Aboriginal Affairs I have two working in the department and another P1 in the process, as well.

Thank you. The approach that the Power Corp has taken on this project on a number of areas was to minimize the costs. For example, after going out for our fee, the corporation chose a contractor to negotiate the price down, because the one portion, the construction portion was higher than anticipated, and they worked that number back down through an agreement in construction. There is also a portion of the contact that if there’s a savings on moving ahead on this project at lower than expected prices, that will reduce the overall impact, as well. So the corporation has taken a number of steps...