Michael Miltenberger

That is correct, Madam Chair.

The goal with devolution was devolve and evolve, knowing that we’re going to have to look at amendments to various pieces of legislation and change things to better suit the requirements of the Northwest Territories. That issue is on the table for discussion, as the Minister of ITI has laid out, and we’re very well aware of the strong trends to mandatory reporting, and that is going to be a clear, I believe, expectation from Northerners as we talk about proceeding.

It is not a permafrost issue. There have been some depressions identified in one of the areas that the runway happens to be, so they are trying to sort that out. But I understand it is not a permafrost-related issue. Thank you.

Yes, Mr. Chairman.

Our first strategy, of course, would be to identify if there is a particular tick infestation and the magnitude that would warrant such type of intervention as we’ve demonstrated with the barren land caribou. We’ve tracked things very closely and we will intercede when we think it’s warranted. We also have other legislation, the Species at Risk Act, if we think there are challenges in terms of actually affecting their survival of the species. So we’re going to monitor it, but at this point I have seen nothing that would indicate that we have an infestation of that magnitude. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. There was a GNWT communications functional review that captured this and did their review and took a look at what was needed to enhance our capacity. We’ve attempted to be very reasonable that what was in an ideal communications systems would require a much greater investment, but once again, I’d ask if the Premier wants to add anything further to that.

Mr. Speaker, I move, seconded by the honourable Member for Tu Nedhe, that Bill 58, Supplementary Appropriation Act (Infrastructure Expenditures), No. 2, 2015-2016, be read for the second time.

This bill makes supplementary appropriations for infrastructure expenditures for the Government of the Northwest Territories for the 2015-16 fiscal year.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I move, seconded by the honourable Member for Tu Nedhe, that Bill 58, Supplementary Appropriation Act (Infrastructure Expenditures), No. 2, 2015-2016, be read for the third time. Thank you.

I would suggest that for the last eight years now, we’ve been hard at work with our evolving energy strategy, from the time we put $60 million in our last government to a serious investment, $60 million towards alternative energy that we’ve come up with an energy plan. We’ve had energy charrettes that have helped structure and focus that energy plan. We’ve had another energy charrette last November and there is going to be a response tabled in the House this week. We have a power system plan from NTPC power as it was looking at infrastructure for the transmission line expansion to see if that...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. We have a challenge ahead of us and it does require some investment. We can’t just turn our back on trying to address the issue. I know the Member’s position is that we can somehow find all the talent we need in the North and if we keep it here it will all be well and good, but first we need an economy.

We have diamond mines that add $1.6 billion to our GDP every year. They have a significant fly-in/fly-out population. We are working with the mines. In fact, there’s a meeting this week to talk about this initiative, as well, from the private sector’s perspective and the...