Michael Miltenberger

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I move, seconded by the honourable Member for Yellowknife South, that Bill 4, Appropriation Act (Operations Expenditures), 2012-2013, be read for the first time.

All those issues would have been part of the protracted dispute resolution at some point, and a year from now when the project would have been completed if we would have chosen to go down that acrimonious, litigious path, that would not be in the best interest of the people of the Northwest Territories.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I give notice that on Monday, June 11, 2012, I will move that Bill 4, Appropriation Act (Operations Expenditures), 2012-2013, be read for the first time.

Thank you, Madam Chair. We do intend and we are going to do this work and we’re going to continue to do the work in the proper way. As the deputy indicated, the licence had some restriction factors in it. We found out where things aren’t; now we have to find out where things are.

In terms of the money that is now before this House, it will allow us, once again, enough of the information that committee and the MLAs were asking for and that we need to make an informed decision about this project, about potential costs and are all the resources there in terms of granular resources and such. I’ll...

Thank you, Madam Chair. Over the last few months Executive Council and Members of the Legislative Assembly have been working hard on a compressed 2012-13 planning schedule.

This included the review of departmental 2012-13 business plans in April and consideration of the 2012-13 Main Estimates in Committee of the Whole during the Third Session.

As part of their review, Members of this House have recommended amendments to the 2012-13 budget.

The Financial Management Board has considered these recommendations. Based on our discussions, we are prepared to make the following adjustments:

With...

I apologize if I seem like I’m being obtuse or a little slow here. We get the money and we pay 1.4 percent.

Thank you, Madam Chair. This is the Residential Power Subsidy Program.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I’d have to ask the Member to clarify the interest rate that we would lend to ourselves, that we’d lend to other people or other businesses?

I’ll get Mr. Kalgutkar to speak to that, but the amount does drop from $5 million on down. I’ll ask Mr. Kalgutkar to provide the detail.

Thank you, Madam Chair. When I indicated that it looks like things from an economic point of view are improving, one of the assumptions in that is, for example, if you look at the Sahtu, there’s a huge amount of activity. If that oil play in fact advances past the exploration stage, I believe we will see an increase in population. As the other diamond mine goes on stream, there’s potential there as well. We have six, seven, eight, as the Premier and the Minister of ITI have laid out, significant projects on the drawing board in the pipeline for development, all of which would not be able to be...