Michael Miltenberger

I can appreciate the Member’s concern and his patience and his resolute pursuit of this issue along with his other colleagues from small communities. What I would suggest, since he’s referred to and looking for hope potentially, in his mind, with the review of vacancies that the committee asked yesterday for some more detailed information and we are in the process of finalizing that information. But once that information is reviewed and we all have a common understanding of the breakdown of the numbers, which I think will meet the concern of the Members, then we can have a more informed...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’ll speak first, of course, to the fiscal reality that we face, which the Member is very conversant with and well aware of. I can also speak to the fact that there are health and safety issues for employees now. It’s no longer a case of one nurse or one RCMP, but it’s going to be two or maybe even three to cover off all of these health and safety issues, which gets back to being a significant cost factor.

We are trying to profile our resources to make sure that we provide coverage for health and social services and for the RCMP to provide that security and comfort to...

We have collectively approved in this House every budget that comes before it that runs the Government of the Northwest Territories. This is my 19th year, so I’ve been through the budget cycle 19 times. I believe my colleague has been through that cycle 10 times. This issue of vacancies has come up periodically about what’s happening, what’s the vacancy rate and what are we doing to fill them, all legitimate questions. The Member now has taken it to another level where he’s implying that there’s some kind of conspiracy and planned wrongdoing here, and there isn’t, Mr. Speaker.

We have numbers...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. No.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The establishment of a Heritage Fund has been a long process going back to the last Assembly, and we started with the legislative proposal to get the legislation passed. We got the legislation passed in anticipation of the day when devolution would come. In the meantime, we started putting in a very modest amount of money, a quarter-million dollars a year, seed money, as it were. We’ve always contemplated, and it has always been anticipated that as the fund devolves as we hit devolution, and as the money starts being put into the Heritage Fund, and as it grows in...

Mr. Speaker, we are booking a whole number of dollar figures. We are booking all the money we’re getting for our A-base transfer, for all the positions, all the programs. We are booking the notional amount of $120 million as projected revenue, and once we get the money, then we’ll talk about the expenditures which we have committed to, one of them being the Heritage Fund, the 25 percent. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, last week I delivered the 2014-15 budget on behalf of the Government of the Northwest Territories. That budget was based on a fiscal strategy of living within our means while still identifying funds to better support the people of the Northwest Territories and make strategic investments in our economy. Part of our plan included investing in the future of the territory by allocating 5 percent of resource revenues coming through devolution to the Heritage Fund.

While public reaction to the budget has generally been positive, Members have clearly indicated that they disagree with the...

Mr. Speaker, we are constantly held to that account, and to my understanding, it is embedded in part of that documented process. Thank you.

The issue of the debt to revenue number, for example, 5 percent, a maximum 5 percent can go to interest payments out of revenue. It’s not 1 percent; it’s 5 percent, so the Member’s statement earlier in the day was wrong, just for a point of clarification. But that number, we looked across the fiscal landscape across the country and it’s something that is manageable, and at the 5 percent of revenue, yes, we could manage the additional cost should we get a borrowing limit of a billion dollar bump-up and should we decide to invest that money, and yes, that money would be targeted to economic...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We, as well, have hopes for Highway No. 9. As I pointed out to the Member, not over supper but we did have a chat, I don’t think there’s been a budget that I can recollect where the Norman Wells to Wrigley portion of the Mackenzie Highway has received as much attention, because it is a critical chunk, or the next segment of the Mackenzie Highway. So we are, once again, looking at that.

The Bear River Bridge, as well, is on our shortlist of bridges. As I indicated, there are calls in the next few days with Ministers and deputies to look at what the federal government...