Michael Miltenberger

Thank you, Madam Chair. The budget before us has money for highway maintenance. It’s not broken out. I don’t have the specific information for the Highway No. 7 maintenance costs. The capital budget has already been passed and we had a discussion today about the plan of the government as we deal with our borrowing limit to enable us to make key strategic infrastructure investments in the coming months.

Yes, Madam Chair.

The Member is in the legislative legends with his song “If I Had a Million Dollars” and if you sign the deal with devolution, you’ll have over $300 million, so I think you should just keep that one in mind as he’s making music.

We will have the discussion about the legislation, the issue about the programs that are best held with the Minister of Health and Social Services. There’s been a democratic vote that’s been taken, a decision has been made by the voters in Norman Wells, and we have acted upon that as we are required to do and obligated to do under our democratic system. If we want to...

If we’re going to in fact make music together, we’ll have to ensure that it’s not a sad song, because I understand from the questions in the House yesterday that the Member has a broken heart as a result of devolution, so we’ll have to be very careful what kind of music we make. As I’ve indicated, I’m more than willing to sit down with the Member and talk the specifics.

That commitment stands for the Member in his constituency as well as all the other Members opposite. We will and are going to do the best job possible with the resources available. We are going to look at making strategic investments. When the Minister of Transportation is back from his travels, he will be able to speak to great detail about the Member’s concerns whether from a broad government point of view. This issue very clearly is on our to-do list, our priority list should extra funds become available, which we anticipate they will in the coming months. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. The harsh assessment by the Member aside, Human Resources performs a very valuable service. They have a lot of very hardworking people. As the Minister pointed out in his statement in the House today, there are a lot of good things at work. We have over 5,000 employees. We’re doing things like negotiating at four separate bargaining tables. I think the Member’s characterization is overly harsh and it’s not an accurate portrayal of all the good work that is done by the many people in human resources. I’m not sure if the Minister wants to comment himself, but for the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I give notice that on February 9, 2012, I will move that Bill 1, An Act to Amend the Borrowing Authorization Act, be read for the first time. Thank you.

We’re open to all suggestions that haven’t been considered in the last 17 years or so, and we will, of course, give them all the consideration they deserve.

As we indicated in our discussions with the mayor last week – a very good discussion – this is fundamentally a municipal issue. There are things that have to be worked out with this condominium corporation. It’s not the position of the government to get involved in those type of circumstances. There are things that have to be done, there are funds that have to be raised, there are debenture votes that have to be taken, there are changes to the condo corporation that have to take place first before anything else can happen. The debate about what can and what should the residents of Northlands...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I wish to table three documents, entitled “Interim Appropriation 2012-2012; Supplementary Estimates (Infrastructure Expenditures), No. 3, 2011-2012; and Supplementary Estimates (Operations Expenditures), No. 3, 2011-2012.”