Michael Miltenberger

I will commit to take the Member’s request under advisement. I’ll report back and we’ll have a discussion in the Ministerial Energy Coordinating Committee to see how fast we can move on this.

There’s a lot of work that’s been done, but there’s more required, and as I indicated, there’s also some important related work like the Mineral Strategy and the Economic Development Strategy. So there are a lot of pieces at play here and that are linked. We want to move those along as quickly as we can, I agree with the Member. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I appreciate the Member’s interest and comments about alternative energy and his interest in hydro.

I would point out that we have done a significant amount of retrofits, for example, and we are saving many hundreds of thousands of dollars, which is a lot of rice. It should be appreciated for the value that it brings. I know that the Member supports that approach.

In terms of the hydro project and in Taltson, we spent over the last probably two Assemblies about $13 million doing technical assessments both on the project at the Taltson site and the other piece was the...

Thank you, Madam Chair. I appreciate the Member’s comments about the committee letters. The responses have gone out. They should be available to Members. They went out this morning.

In regard to the recommendations coming out of committee, we’re also scheduled to meet with committee at the rise of the House on Monday to have further discussion about the detail.

I would point out that while we anticipate and are planning for $74 million surplus in 2012-13, the reality is we have debt of about $656 million. The majority of that, while it is self-liquidating, leaves us with about 240 to 260...

Thank you, Madam Chair. I’d like to thank the Member for his kind words about the budget and the work that we’ve all put into developing this, both MLAs, Cabinet and, of course, the people in government.

I want to reassure the Member that he talked about not abandoning the communities and don’t take back the funding and withdraw funding. In this budget there are no program cuts. We’ve reinvested and are continuing to support all the departments’ programs and services that we do provide.

As we talk about a climate of certainty economically, we, as well, agree and we want to, for many reasons, but...

Thank you, Madam Chair. I have with me Mike Aumond, deputy minister of Finance.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I have with me Mike Aumond, deputy minister of Finance. Madam Chair, I’ll just quickly respond.

There will be more detailed discussion as we get into the individual departments. I’ve looked at the ITI budget operations expenditures on page 12-7, and I see $10.398 remaining for this year in the main estimates and last year the main estimates were $10.054. So I’m not sure where the Member got the $10.7 million, but hopefully that can be clarified in debate or in discussion with the Minister when we do the departmental review.

As well as the specific issues of the money...

A point of fact, the Member has no idea how I feel and he has no idea how hard I fought or not fought on this issue.

I think the proof is in the pudding. We have a project that is nearing completion. There have been challenges, without a doubt, and they’ve been reported and debated and discussed in this House and in the press.

Our first priority and our first full attention is to get the project done and completed, and open to traffic and generating revenue. After that, we have committed to doing a full post-mortem and we will make sure that that information is shared. It has nothing to do with...

What I will commit to is when the project is completed, we will do a review, a post-mortem to make sure that we learn the lessons necessary on what worked well, what didn’t work as well, how we structured ourselves, and the very many other issues that may flow out of that. I know the Member has indicated a very specific interest, but by just providing single pieces of correspondence or a sheaf of correspondence on a very, very complex process without a broad context and having all the pieces together would be counterproductive, in my mind, and we’re not in the position to do that until the...

We’ve been negotiating these agreements now for literally decades. There’s a very complex criteria in some cases with the formula funding agreement. As well, there’s a lot of specific criteria used. The health transfer numbers were laid out pretty clearly and bluntly by the federal Finance Minister. As I indicated, we have a working group through the Council of the Federation at work. That work that they’re doing is supposed to be ready for June when the Premiers meet at their next meeting. When that work is completed, we will have an idea collectively of what the landscape looks like or could...

The Member made reference in his statement to what sounded like what is referred to a base-plus approach to blended funding where you have a fixed amount, everybody receives a fixed amount and after that the calculations move to a per capita basis. That is an approach that is in use at every opportunity by every ministry of the government, and the territorial government as a whole supports that kind of approach. It has been put to use in some cases.

In regard to the health transfer, there’s a floor of no less than 3 percent. No province or territory is supposed to be disadvantaged using the...