Michael Miltenberger

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.

At this point, we’re looking at agreements that would last 15 or 20 years.

The acronym MARS stands for Mutual Aid Resource Sharing Agreement. That is the agreement that encompasses the arrangements for fire suppression sharing of resources. Thank you.

This is not a federal program. When it’s a federal program, all the provinces and territories have agreements signed with each other. So if there’s a significant demand in, for example, Ontario and they need help and they call us and we’re able to send people, we will do that and we will recover our costs. Henceforth, going forward forevermore it will be listed right now under page 13-38 under work performed on behalf of others. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I appreciate the comments from the Member. In regard to the reduced budget, part of the money that’s in the budget from last year that is not there this year yet is about $6 million that we got through special warrant and through the House to fight fires. So chances are, given the issue of the base budget, and the fact that things are drying out rapidly, and the relative humidity is dropping, and we’ve already had some fire starting, we will be back requesting further funding to fight fires as they do arise. So the $9 million, as the Member said, it is actually what we...