Michael Miltenberger

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m not sure if it’s short order or short-term, but really in the short term we’re guaranteed the 6 percent increase and then subsequent to that it will be tied to the nominal GDP to a minimum of 3 percent. We will have to govern ourselves accordingly. It depends. I laid out some demographics, for example, about the doubling of our population over 60 by 2015 or so. We’re going to have to manage ourselves accordingly.

I would also point out that under the arrangements that have been proposed there were two jurisdictions that were positively impacted. One of them, in a...

The issue of whether there’s a fragile global economy or not we could debate. We could debate the use of the term “fragility.” Clearly, when you have written Ireland, Greece, Spain, Portugal, Hungary, Poland, most of the former Eastern European block countries, France, either in recession or teetering on the edge of recession and the United States just struggling to get back out of recession, when we have our own provincial jurisdictions all in severe deficit reduction mode, I would say that things could be defined to be tenuous. The Member has made reference to what sounds like a fairly...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would agree with the Member. We definitely don’t have enough money to throw around, but let me go through the lists.

You made a comment about the subsidy, but we need to do more to reduce reliance. Within the fiscal ability that we have available to us, we are doing a significant amount of work. It varies. Like biomass, retrofits, upgrades. We’re looking at a very positive geothermal opportunity. We’ve put in the biggest solar array in this part of the country in Simpson. We are looking at our hydro opportunities, both to the north around Deline as well as the North...

If we were to contemplate putting money into the Heritage Fund, it would be money that we’d have to borrow at this point. We have, as I indicated and tried to lay out in the budget address, our short-term and long-term borrowing costs, how much we have, the need to put aside and replenish our cash reserves so we can commit to infrastructure in year three and four and we’re very aware of the Heritage Fund sitting there. We do have plans to do a number of things in year three and four, as I’ve indicated as well.

The Heritage Fund is on that list. In the meantime we have to have two years of...

Sorry, Madam Chair, for the confusion. In regard to the prevention and promotion, as I indicated in the budget address, we’re going to be responding to the letters from the Social Programs committee and all the committees in terms of their requests and recommendations and we’re going to bring forward what we think will hopefully be an acceptable response.

The Deh Cho Bridge opening, it is important. The vast majority of the funds have been expended. We anticipate that this piece of infrastructure will be open before winter and that’s what we’re working towards.

The Inuvik-Tuk highway, as I have...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. After 17 years I’m glad you remembered who I am.

I’d like to take this opportunity to recognize a good old Metis boy from Fort Smith who’s made very well, and my companion for dinner just about weekly, and a man who has a long, sterling reputation in serving the people of the Northwest Territories, my friend and colleague, Mr. Tony Whitford.

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...