Michael Miltenberger

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I believe the Department of Health and Social Services can put out some broad numbers that show and point to the societal impacts of alcohol abuse right from babies being born with FASD right up to all the costs of work and jail, shelters being full and that type of thing. The issue of the money, this $25 million goes into general revenue, so we have general revenue of over $1.6 billion, $1.8 billion. Out of that, including this, we take now with the supplementary appropriations that are being considered, Health will get over $400 million of that, so it all gets mixed...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. For the purpose of this budget, we have come forward with a budget that it stays at the 2 percent. Is there a debate that could be had next budget go around to talk about the efficacy of raising it, how does that work, what kind of additional revenue would it generate? That’s a discussion that we could have, but for this budget we’ve left it at 2 percent. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to recognize some folks that are tied in with the NEBS legislation that are putting a lot of time in this particular bill: Shawn Maley, Nicole Pintkowsky, Bev Walker, Cassandra Cassaway, Rebecca Masongsong, and Ken Burns from Lawson Lundell. Thank you for being here today.

Mr. Chair, we are always interested and prepared to have discussions with committee. If it is on an area such as this, yes, we are prepared to have a discussion about concerns, next steps, options, but I would ask Mr. Koe if he wanted to speak to some of the things on the drawing board in terms of addressing some concerns that we are dealing with, and we do get a considerable and fairly steady stream of issues being raised.

Mr. Chairman, as with the Heritage Fund, it will flow once it’s accrued and we know exactly what amount of money we have available to in fact divvy up. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, as of April 1st we are finally going to have legislative authority over water, excluding the offshore, in our territory.

This is major step forward for the people of the Northwest Territories as water binds us together. We share with all NWT residents the desire to safeguard our water resources for current and future generations.

New responsibilities assumed by Environment and Natural Resources under the new NWT Waters Act will enable us to do this.

ENR will approve water licences prepared by the land and water boards and will be responsible for inspections and enforcement of those...

On behalf of the Department of Finance and the office of the comptroller general, I would like to thank the Member for his accolades and kind words in this House and on the record. As he’s indicated, good work was done, an enormous amount of work by all parties. I just thank the Member. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. That’s the estimate that we have booked for Aboriginal government’s share of the net fiscal benefit that’s flowing to us through the agreement to collect all resource royalties; 50 percent goes to the federal government, the remaining 50 percent, when we look at that, of that, 25 percent of what’s left as agreed to go to the Aboriginal governments, and that’s what we anticipate based on past estimates that will accrue over the course of this coming year starting April 1st.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We would be more than happy to meet with committee for a full and comprehensive update and review of this financial shared services amalgamation which has been fast-tracked and is more pressing than ever to have it done, given we’ve on the eve of devolution.

In regards to the specific issues with the Member’s constituents, I would suggest that an appropriate venue for that would be an opportunity for the Member and myself and some staff to sit down and we could review the particular circumstances so that we all have the same information and we can make sure that we deal...

Thank you. I believe it’s 52. In phase three we’re going to be looking at further decentralization as well. That work is underway and other opportunities for decentralization are being identified. So that’s to date, but I’ll ask Mr. Aumond if he wants to add anything further to that issue. Thank you.