Michael Miltenberger

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There is a number of things being done. For example, I know in some of the buildings, there are green teams being set up across the departments bringing together employees to look at ways to be more efficient, more environmentally friendly and look at savings just from the basic way we do business.

As well, I mean all of the departments, and I would not necessarily agree that we don’t take advantage of the skills and creativity of our employees. We also, I believe, do have some encouragement for that. We have money in the budget to look at trying to find ways to retain...

My understanding is that the resource prices haven’t been high enough for them to proceed much further. We are interested as a government in looking at how we can be as supportive to any number of industries and projects like Tamerlane. I agree with the Member; it’s geographically located very close to the source. It’s on a highway system. It has many things in its favour. When the Premier stands up to speak in the next few weeks, he’ll be tying those together as we revisit the assumptions of the current project as well as what are some of the other factors that are being considered.

The Member has to keep in mind what we collectively agreed would be the role of the government and the Legislature through the course of the last number of years through this economic downturn; the worst, as I like to say, since the Great Depression. We’ve managed our way through this, we have kept our expenditures where they were, we didn’t lay off folks, we invested a billion dollars in infrastructure because we knew we had to step into the gap as the private sector struggled, as the private sector revenues dropped. As we’ve seen today, the fallout is still with us with the drop in corporate...

Mr. Speaker, I would like to take this opportunity to thank all Members of the Legislative Assembly who worked individually and collectively through the Cabinet and standing committee process to contribute to the formation of this, the final budget of the 16th Assembly.

Three years ago this government’s first budget set a goal of fiscal sustainability of living within our means. To do this we realigned spending with priorities, made some cuts and changed some of the ways the government does business to foster good financial planning and produce long-term fiscal savings. We did this in order to...

I would have to ask him too many questions of clarification to be able to give him an answer. I don’t know if he’s assuming we’re going to stay at the current rate, if the government puts us back to 500 or if they give us an increase. I’m not sure about some of these other questions. We’re fully expecting to be able to incorporate whatever the final decision is. We’re expecting it will allow us to move forward and not be punished, as it were, with having the Opportunities Fund. We can’t afford a way that’s going to be detrimental to us. We’ve had those discussions already with Canada. It makes...

Mr. Speaker, we have, I believe, all of the elements that we need in place to make those right decisions. We want to work with the Members, like the Member for Great Slave with his suggestions, about somehow harnessing in a more effective way the creativity of our existing staff and are there ways to have less reliance on the very many contract folks that we use to do the very many pieces of work that government needs to get done, because, on a normal course of events, the staff we have are fully engaged. I think we would have to think carefully before we commit outright, standing up on the...

Mr. Speaker, that is the basis that we are proceeding on right now. Since it is Finance that has made the initial determination, the Auditor General had initially told us that the way we were accounting for it was acceptable. Finance Canada had indicated that they thought it should be included in our borrowing limit, so as we proceeded with the discussion of the borrowing limit, there was an understanding that we have to put all these pieces on hold until we have that final determination between ourselves and the federal government, which we are aiming to have concluded by April. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, as I have indicated, we are in the third year of a very ambitious capital planning process of over $1.1 billion, a record amount. We are going to be moving into the year after this coming fiscal year of 2013 into a much more normal -- humble as it were almost, on a comparative basis to what we have just been spending -- capital plan of about $75 million. We currently have made some significant changes on how we do capital. There will also be added attention and rigour to the system that Cabinet and committees come up with to view the capital projects, because there is going to be...

Mr. Speaker, once again, as I indicated in my budget address, governments across Canada are moving full bore into fiscal restraint deficit fighting, debt reduction to address the very significant debt and deficits that most of them have, including the federal government. We also know that the federal government has given instructions already within their own departments about no growth at all. Departments have to absorb all of the costs for forced growth for collective agreements and any other costs. We know that we have programs in health, for example, that are worth millions of dollars that...

Mr. Speaker, the area of housing is a critical one. We do have resources identified and we have a plan to move ahead, working with committees and communities and the Housing Corporation, to review both critical questions of how we offset the CMHC housing funding that is declining as well as the housing challenges that exist in various communities from houses that don’t get filled right away to other program structure the right way. Are we providing disincentives to work? I think those are all the areas where the Housing Corporation, along with other related departments and Members, is going to...