Michael Miltenberger

The criteria for the formula stay the same, so it’s still governed by things like tax effort and the amount of money spent in other jurisdictions. And their operations, as I indicated in my budget address, we anticipate with the deficit reduction going on across the land, that our formula could be affected negatively, but the criteria and all the elements of the formula have been left in place until 2018-19, but we’re still bound by those variables.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. There has been significant improvement in terms of the time. We have met yearly, at least I meet yearly, the staff meets more often with the Audit Bureau, the audit folks, and we work with all the agencies that are supposed to be reporting in. We have shortened that timeline and are going to keep working on shortening it. There has been recognition of the improvement by the Auditor General, but I’ll ask the deputy if he wants to add anything further to that matter.

We get revised amounts monthly, but the date by which most returns are in is October, so October is a month we look to to get more certainty.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We are reasonably happy. There are many things we don’t control when it comes to risk management. For example, the majority of our communities are in the middle of the Boreal Forest. There are more and more extreme weather events across the land. The whole concept of stationarity, which is the predictability of those types of occurrences, has all but disappeared. The insurance business, in fact, no longer looks at stationarity because it makes forecasting and doing insurance, and making projections almost impossible. Given a number of those broader major variables, we...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have with me the deputy minister, Mr. Mike Aumond, and the deputy secretary to the Financial Management Board, Mr. Sandy Kalgutkar. If either one of them faint tonight it’s because I was insensitive and did not invite them in to have supper, and I publicly apologize for that.

Thank you. We’re looking at two things here, but we’re going to be, from the start and on into the future, a major partner in this if we go out to Aboriginal governments. Once the debt is paid off it will generate revenue. What we’re looking at is what would be a more modest than would be normal return on investment so that we can make our best efforts to keep the cost of service into the communities as reasonable as possible, which we think will generate a longer-term benefit and get us more customers. So, yes, there is going to be revenue generation and it’s also going to have some broader...

I do, Mr. Chairman. I am here to present the Department of Finance’s Main Estimates for the 2013-14 fiscal year.

For 2013-14, the department has identified a total operations budget of approximately $156.3 million, which represents a 10 percent increase over the current fiscal year.

The operations budget is comprised of:

A $67.5 million contribution to the NWT Housing Corporation to provide the Corporation with its operating cash flow for the fiscal period.

The remaining $80.8 million for department operations represents a 10 percent increase from the 2012-13 Main Estimates. This is primarily the...

So it is clear for the Member or for this House as well, we are actively pursuing discussions with some of the Aboriginal governments looking to set up a joint venture, which would be separate and wouldn’t involve the P3 approach. So what structure we choose to go forward could possibly affect the dollars. The other thing, of course, is if this project in fact generates the revenue we think it will, then the increased revenue will more than offset and diminish what’s owed. Thank you.

Mr. Chair, the framework will be done this current fiscal year and we would look to advance it fully into the next ‘14-15 budget cycle.

Mr. Chair, the Member and I have had numerous discussions about the ravages of alcohol and its destructive force across the entire fabric of the Northwest Territories and how he and I, growing old together, still talk about how do we bend the curve on this in a positive way.