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...

Yes, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Consumption is up. Whether it’s because it’s not as efficient as they thought it would be, I think the pressure is more on the cold weather and costs are up all over the place just because of the cold and the greater demand, but I can get that detailed information for the Member. Thank you.

Madam Chair, I was working on my BlackBerry. Could you repeat the question?

Let me be clear. We have and are handing out and have handed out, I understand, 150 tags, authorizations to Yellowknives to hunt. What I was talking about was the assertion by the Member that we were doing it somehow with the chief’s signature on the authorization. That particular fact I haven’t had confirmed from ENR.

We want to work out an arrangement with the Yellowknives that involves ENR, that involves monitoring, that involves a coordinated, cooperative effort to oversee this process as opposed to just having carte blanche and we’ll check back with you and trust us we’ll take care of it...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As we do this budget and we look at the fluid nature of the revenue projections, I don’t think it should blind us to the fact that we have, over the years, evolved what I think is a budgeting system, although some people may think it has a lot of shortcomings. It does what it is supposed to do.

We are, by any national standard, one of the best run jurisdictions in the country. We have managed our way through the worst economic downturn since the great depression. We protected programs, services, prevented staff layoffs, negotiated agreements with all our employees, we...

Officials from ENR and my office upstairs are tracking the discussion here and they will be following up, as the Member has suggested. There have been a considerable number of meetings between the officials in ENR and the Yellowknives and they have been unable to come to a satisfactory agreement.

In the meantime, ENR has set up the processes to hand out tags and authorizations so that, in fact, the Yellowknives can take advantage of the opportunity to harvest 150 animals in the banned hunting area. As well, we’ve talked about a broader arrangement. We’ve just had a big Bathurst Management Herd...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. First, just to point out that if it is not already clear, these are very fluid numbers, the projections that are changing with CIT. Corporations can reach back years to file, decide when they are going to file, where they are going to file. Personal income tax, people file at different times and it takes months. So these numbers are fluid but, yes, $38 million is the number.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. In this budget before us, we have about $6.8 million in passive restraint. We capped our forced growth at I think it is 2 percent and we are trying to limit the growth of government. Going into ‘15-16 we are going to be looking for a total of $30 million in re-profiling to pay for the budget that is currently before us, with the addition of the Heritage Fund bump-up from 5 to 25 percent. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The estimates are higher. There was a formula change from an equal per capita, total allocation cash and tax transfer to an equal per capita cash allocation, and to put that into simple English, I’ll turn to the deputy. Thank you.