Michael Miltenberger

Madam Speaker, rather than debate the details of the policy approaches, I’m not sure what suggestions the Member has in mind. For example, we would be more than willing to appear before committee with all the appropriate folks to have a discussion about those detailed issues.

Right now we are spending millions on rebate programs, support programs, incentive programs to encourage individuals and businesses to convert. As a territorial government, we have embarked upon a government-wide biomass retrofit process, in some cases with hydro as well. So we have, I believe, moved past the one-off pilot...

We will incorporate the issue of cost-effectiveness of greenhouse gases as we look at doing things like LNG, like hydro, like biomass, solar, wind. We will look at those and make sure we include that in our calculations.

Madam Speaker, there is work underway to in fact produce such a document. Thank you.

Madam Speaker, during December's power outage in the city of Yellowknife, it became apparent that communications from the Northwest Territories Power Corporation did not meet its customers’ expectations or its own standards. It is our goal to keep power outages to a minimum. The corporation has taken steps necessary to improve communication during both planned and unplanned power outages in the territory and will continue to do so.

This incident made it clear that we needed a more coordinated, timely and consistent approach to communicating power outages. We immediately updated our...

Madam Speaker, I would encourage the Member to share his good ideas as opposed to us doing what we think is appropriate and wait for Mr. Bromley to say whether we’ve got it right, in his opinion, or not. It’s a much tougher way and much more time-consuming way to do business. I would encourage the Member to share the specifics. We can arrange a meeting, if committee is interested, and we can make this as collaborative as we can. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. To use a phrase used in this House by you, we are looking to see if we can do things better. Clearly, we started back in 2007 or thereabouts with the Greenhouse Gas Strategy. We have worked our way through or are partway through the second iteration and we’re going to be looking at what improvements can be made to our work, to the significant investments that we make to the Ministerial Energy Coordinating Committee and to new initiatives, and how do we look at and measure what’s most effective in achieving the various goals. Thank you.

As we sit here debating and considering the budget put forward by the government, the expenditures for the year are laid out. We’ve made an accommodation on the Heritage Fund. That will be included in this as we go forward. So we need to address that issue.

I would be happy to have further discussions with the Member in this venue or other venues of a more social nature where there may even be some food on the table to help promote discussion. But, very clearly, I anticipate that we will be continuing this discussion once we conclude the debate on this current budget.

As it pertains to health and social services, I know that there has been, over the years, a lot of discussion, a lot of planning, a lot of creating of models of what would be an ideal staffing model in the communities for all health and social services programs and when we look at the actual numbers – and you’ve seen some of the requests that come through – they would bankrupt the government.

So every year we do business plans, every year we sit down with communities, we sit down with the departments and we go through the programs and services that are there, always within the fiscal context...

I would ask the Member to give one shred of evidence about pet projects, about the allegations he’s making. He says, why are we even here? We’re approving a $1.6 billion budget that provides services to every man, woman and child in the Northwest Territories. That’s why we’re here. We’re here to make laws that are going to benefit our people. We’re here to provide direction and oversight of a very complex organization.

The Member has some questions and concerns about positions. We have over 5,000 jobs. He’s talking about a few hundred vacancies, which we will lay out in detail as to where they...

The Member is making very harsh, unfounded allegations of criminal wrongdoing, which is what he said, and asking that people be fired on the basis of the fact that for the last three days we’ve been sorting through vacancy rate numbers and he’s now convinced that there is a criminal wrongdoing, which would mean, since the deputies all report to Ministers, that there was some type of complicity or conspiracy.

Very clearly, this Legislature votes positions, when they are part of the budget process, to fulfil functions in government. Once those positions are in place and they are staffed or in the...