Michael Miltenberger

The Legislative Assembly Building Society’s bylaws state that any surplus is to be used for the benefit of the Legislative Assembly building and the Legislative Assembly did receive legal advice from its Law Clerk that the wording of the society’s bylaws was broad enough to include all the planned projects for the surplus, including the celebration events. Thank you.

Mr. Chair, we have a very clear policy as it pertains to the values at risk, starting with safety, people, communities and infrastructure and then we move back from there. As we saw this summer in the Deh Cho, for example, there were a number of fires in their communities and we pulled all our resources available, plus we brought in whatever we had to, to protect those values at risk. That policy and criteria is very clearly laid out. Thank you.

This $8.706 million will have us fully subscribing to the $26.5 million.

There is a capital infrastructure component, which is currently before us. Then the remainder of the balance of the money will be accounted for in the O and M supp. Thank you.

I have just two quick comments. The issue with avgas is you have to make sure you have it there ahead of time, because if you don’t have it and you need it, chances are it’s going to take a week, 10 days, sometimes two to three weeks if it has to come in by truck, so you’re really up against it.

Yes, absolutely, we will be continuing to come forward to committee with big reviews, all the matters pertaining to firefighting behaviour along with the very many other ENR issues that we routinely come to committee with. Thank you.

I just wanted to note, for the record, that the Member referenced the culpability of the Legislative Assembly Building Society members and I wanted to point out clearly, unequivocally, with no ambiguity, that culpability implies some kind of wrongdoing, some kind of guilt for something that’s happened.

I think we should all be collectively thanking the Legislative Assembly Building Society members for the work that they’ve done, the honour that they’ve carried out the responsibility with and the thoroughness and long-lasting dedication.

For the record, there is no culpability. That word shouldn...

Thank you. We agree that there is a lot of work and we acknowledge and recognize there’s a lot of interest in terms of what’s happening in the Peel on our side of the border, but also what’s happening on the western side in the Yukon. So we’ve put in that request. I indicated, in part of my previous answer, that the response from the Yukon government is yes, they know, and they do want to meet, but they would like to have some preliminary discussions about how do we modernize and update the transboundary agreement. So we’re working with them on that. But I will make sure that we keep the...

That is the challenge before us, as the Member articulates. But clearly, at this point our focus is on getting our thinking clear on the guidance we need to provide as a government when it comes to best practices of unconventional hydraulic fracturing. Then we have to work, as well, just to see what’s going to happen at the exploration stage. If things prove out and we start moving into the fact being a producing field, then clearly the work and those questions the Member has posed will be part of the grist for the millet of environmental assessments, the timing of intensity, pace, all those...

We have a major economic initiative, alternative energy-based initiative, which is the expansion of the transmission lines between Snare and the Taltson between 500 million to 700 million dollars. I consider that a very, very substantial investment. We are working throughout the North on expanding biomass, wind, solar. We are investing millions in that as well. We are spending millions upgrading our own facilities, converting to biomass. We’ve changed our guidelines for construction. Wherever you look, we are trying to lower our consumption and improve our energy efficiencies, work on...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. For my final answer, we have an air monitoring station in Norman Wells. As things develop and expand, of course, we are going to take a look at the capacity of the station and ensure that it has the capacity to measure all the necessary criteria on qualities of the air so that we can ensure and deal with all of the issues tied to the development. Thank you.