Michael Miltenberger

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I wish to table the following two documents, entitled “Interim Financial Statements of the Government of the Northwest Territories for the Year Ended March 31, 2015;” and “Inter-Activity Transfers Exceeding $250,000 for the Period April 1 to June 30, 2015.” Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to thank the Member for raising this issue yet again here in a very clear way. As I indicated in the House, we are revising our Greenhouse Gas Strategy and we’re going to convert it to a climate change strategy. That document will be out in the next couple weeks as a discussion document. I can assure the Member that regardless of who’s in this House, in these chairs, the issue of climate change is going to continue to play a major role.

I would, as well, point out that in the last eight years, if you added the money we’ve spent on low water, not even counting...

Mr. Speaker, it is with great pleasure that I rise today to advise Members of this Assembly that our government will be signing a transboundary water management agreement with British Columbia for the shared waters of the Liard and Petitot basins.

This agreement, the second one to be signed with an upstream jurisdiction this year, is another step in ensuring the waters of the Northwest Territories remain clean, abundant and productive for all time.

Similar to the one signed with Alberta in March, this bilateral agreement with British Columbia was shaped by the input of Aboriginal governments in...

It’s not a question of being finally convinced, it’s being in a position to start making those changes. We’re now post-devolution. We now have an excellent corporate example of the savings that have been experienced by Diavik Mines, and they deserve, once again, full marks for their efforts of putting in that wind power on time and on budget in the most remotely challenging place, probably, where wind power exists. We know that we can now make the case post-devolution, with our regulations and policies, to have that discussion on all projects going forward. The same as we are converting all...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. From everything I’ve read, and I would recommend in this House, I read a book called, “Future Arctic” by Ed Struzik. It was very, very compelling reading. But the trends are still on the rise in terms of temperatures going up and the resulting impacts on permafrost, sea ice, with resulting impacts again on the type of weather, the reaction of the ocean, types of storms, the rising sea levels and those types of things. Thank you.

What I can indicate is that we have been pursuing and made repeated requests to in fact have all the necessary travel claims submitted so that we can in fact close the file on the various trips. We have been using the power of persuasion. We don’t have a lot of direct authority over MLAs. They have travelled with us and we’re trying to make sure that we close the books, and we’re going to continue to pursue that and hopefully conclude it.

Mr. Speaker, I move, seconded by the honourable Member for Great Slave Lake, that Bill 72, Supplementary Appropriation Act (Operations Expenditures), No. 2, 2015-2016, be read for the second time.

This bill makes necessary supplementary appropriations for operations expenditures for the Government of the Northwest Territories for the 2015-2016 fiscal year.

We do have a policy. We quite rigorously police ourselves. As was raised in the House earlier, the issue with Minister Ramsay has been dealt with and the file is closed for a very, very small discrepancy. Things have been tightened up. Yes, we believe that we should have an even hand when we apply overdue travel claims since there are cases where MLAs accompany Ministers on foreign travel. There are some outstanding claims and we are encouraging those outstanding claims to be completed.

Thank you. This is a long-standing issue as well. The health budget is the largest budget in the territorial government and it’s the fastest growing. We put in millions, tens of millions of dollars a year in dealing with a lot of the damages caused by alcohol and alcohol abuse. So from a political optics point of view, I know the discussion has been there that we should take the money from liquor proceedings, fines and those types of things, to put them towards a special fund. That discussion is going to be ongoing, but at this point the money goes into consolidated general revenue and we...

Mr. Speaker, the Northwest Territories Power Corporation, or NTPC, continues to adapt and manage its resources to meet the needs of the ever-changing environment of power generation in the North.

For the second year in a row, NTPC is addressing low water on the Snare hydro system; however, extremely low water at Bluefish this year has added to the challenge. While NTPC is effectively managing the use of water and diesel to ensure a stable power supply to the North Slave, this government, with the support of the Legislative Assembly, contributed $20 million to ensure that additional diesel costs...