Michael Miltenberger

The Member referenced earlier, I think in one of his previous general comments, work being done monitoring in Fort Resolution and Fort Smith. This summer we have identified the need to do the work above and below Norman Wells to provide that same kind of monitoring. Over time, as we set up our community-based water monitoring systems, we want to be able to work with the communities and our own skilled resources to provide that assurance across the North. But for this summer there is going to be specific work done to do some of the testing that the Member has referenced. Thank you.

The Land Use and Sustainability Framework is an initiative that is being driven and handled through the Executive.

The forest management agreements have been triggered specifically by the project that’s under consideration right now, or development right now for a pellet plant. We, ITI, the government is at the table trying to do our part. The arrangements between the business in the communities in terms of negotiating access to the material, the capacity building, are going to be driven through that business arrangement. There will still be ongoing access to existing programs that the territorial government now has that could be possibly brought to bear, as well, but the main relationship will be between...

Thank you, Madam Chair. There are two main areas. We are continuing to work on inventories of the forest, and an equally important piece, especially as you look at the possibility of a biomass plant being put up that could do as many as 30,000 metric tons, are these forest management agreements that would have to be entered into with the Aboriginal governments and the GNWT to be able to have access to the material to generate the pellets in a sustainable, go-forward basis so the person or the business making the pellets is able to buy the material to make the pellets.

Forest management...

Yes, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Madam Chair. What we have here from 2011-2012 to 2012-2013 is a change in accounting treatment. In the past we would list it on a revenue summary, but as we have gone through all our reviews, there’s no markup or profit generated. So there’s not a revenue, we just get compensated for our costs. It’s a mutual aid agreement and it could apply to aircraft, it could apply to crews and equipment as well. So this year it’s not going to be listed in revenue. Going forward, it won’t be an item in the budget anymore identified under the revenue summary.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I have with me Mr. Ernie Campbell, deputy minister of Environment and Natural Resources; and Ms. Nancy Magrum, the director of shared services with ENR and ITI, financial services. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to thank the Members, as well, for their input into this motion. In this House as legislators we have a number of tasks before us. We make laws and set up programs and policies, and we administer budgets for the good of all the people. We have to take not only the short view of what’s happening around us but we have to plan, as the Member for Mackenzie Delta said, for the future.

When we started this Assembly we had a plan. We were elected into a reality, a reality where we were coming out of a very significant recession where we spent $1.1 billion in capital...

Thank you, Madam Chair. On the exploration side we have the resources that have been laid out in the business plan. We also, as a government with ITI and ENR, have been doing a lot of work on the issue of unconventional hydraulic fracturing. There has been work done with committee. There’s going to be more work done. We’re doing a thorough review of that whole approach to accessing tight oil. That will inform the way forward. If we move from exploration into development, we will, of course, be planning for what type of development, that is. We’ll be looking at the resource requirements on that...

Thank you, Madam Chair. That money flows a little bit later in the fiscal year and will be brought forward as it has been in a supp.