Michael Miltenberger

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I will choose my response carefully. In this House where there is sometimes political theatre, the demand for instant, quick fixes, silver bullets may play well on the airwaves, but the Member knows in his heart of hearts – he’s been in this Assembly for a considerable amount of time – that everything takes planning. It takes planning, it takes design, it takes resources, it takes consultation and we’ve been working on these improvements since the last Assembly and we are going to continue to do that. If the Member has a silver bullet that he wants to share with us that...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. A point of clarification, for a commercial customer using 2,000 kilowatts in a five-kilowatt demand in Iqaluit and Yellowknife, in Yellowknife the total bill would be $476.53 and in Iqaluit it would be $953.73. Yellowknife to Iqaluit is lower by $477.20. At the residential level, there is a significant subsidy provided to residential power users in Iqaluit versus Yellowknife. Our rates are higher than Whitehorse, but clearly when you look at Whitehorse, they have the majority of their population living very, very close to the city. They have road access to all their...

Thank you, Ms. Chair. We will be supporting the motion. There are two areas that are affected by this. Should an individual have training in another area that’s recognized, then they would be exempted, plus there’s an Aboriginal right to hunt and to harvest. You can’t put any conditions on that. It’s clear. People will agree to it. We will work out how we… Everybody wants to have safe hunting practices within law. You cannot constrain that right that is guaranteed in the Constitution. Thank you.

One of the functions we are taking over from the federal government that has some funding attached to it is a Cumulative Impact Monitoring Program. We have that venue and process that we will be looking at, as a government, in terms of providing the monitoring that’s necessary. We’ll also work with the land and water boards. At this point, there are no plans for an independent monitoring body at this juncture. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I’d like to thank the Members for their comments and just acknowledge that this has been a very complex process and a long process, decades in length. At least probably five governments have been working on this particular issue.

As the comments indicate, there is still not anonymity. I’m hoping that there will be critical support to move this forward to the next phase and that at this juncture, after all this work, that we can take that leap of faith from an archaic, old piece of legislation that originally came to us from the 1950s and is thoroughly and sorely outdated...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The intention is to work with the NEB and with the Sahtu Land and Water Board to look at the new requirements, and review and assess the various proposals and projects as they come forward. We, as well, after April 1st, are in the process collectively of contemplating and planning for what type of regulatory regime we want to have. We want to have a northern-based, northern-driven, northern-controlled regulatory process. We want to make use of the technical skills of the National Energy Board, and we want to be clear, as we go forward, that we have northern control of...

Yes, Madam Chair.

Mr. Speaker, I give notice that on Thursday, October 31, 2013, I will move that Bill 28, Supplementary Appropriation Act (Infrastructure Expenditures), No. 3, 2013-2014, be read for the first time.

Mr. Speaker, I also give notice that on Thursday, October 31, 2013, I will move that Bill 29, Supplementary Appropriation Act (Operations Expenditures), No. 3, 2013-2014, be read for the first time. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, in fact in the last Assembly we did those roundtables and they were based on revenue generation and we did look at taxation. We did it for three cycles, if my memory serves me correctly. The consistent feedback we got from Northerners across the regions, when we brought them to Yellowknife, was that this was not a good time to raise taxes. Thank you.

Every year for months we have budget cycles and, of course, this Legislature and the Members are involved in the budgeting process and if there was a unanimous decision on the other side of the House to say we want to raise taxes here, there or wherever, of course that would have a bearing. But the reality is two things, that they are fully involved and we have listened to the debate and concerns around the North and we’ve been through this House year after year with budgets and we have been holding the line to not add a burden on our businesses or on our residents and we are continuing with...