Michael Miltenberger

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As I indicated in the budget address, there’s going to be $925,000 put in for an employment program through the Rural and Remote Communities. I know the Member was fully supportive of this. We have a Small Community Student Employment Program for $350,000 as well.

Also, we have beefed up the SEED money so that businesses or small communities and entrepreneurs in communities have more opportunity to possibly get help. We have a whole raft of improving skill areas with labour market literacy, mobile trades training, additional support for apprentices, other training...

I will look at the wording of the question so it’s clear exactly how the Member sees us doing this. For example, if we’ve budgeted to save $100 million over the life of the lease of the office building in Yellowknife, if that’s the kind of math we use, or will that not be satisfactory to the Member. So I’ll have to check Hansard to see how we could best respond. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, there were a number of decisions made. The big concrete one, of course, was the office building, which has a projected savings of $100 million over the life of the building. We, as well, looked at the work that was done. We had the discussion and the work continues to be done in a whole host of areas, some of which I identified in my statement today, and decisions were made not to proceed on some things because of our assessment that there was no political appetite to proceed with some of those particular issues. Thank you.

It’s my recollection of the last briefing we gave to committee where we identified the work that was being done on these various and looking at what was possible. Some of the complexities, some of the impacts as it would be felt depending what the decision was in terms of, for example, the PTR being higher, considerably higher than is required under legislation, or changes to the inclusive schooling budget that would allow us to reprofile. It was at those meetings and the feedback and the discussion and the juncture where we were in this Assembly that there was not going to be much political...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We think there’s a significant opportunity. There’s money in the budget to look at the area of primary concern as has been identified by Members and is a primary concern in the communities, and that is in the area of the housing review. We know there have been opportunities identified by the Program Review Committee that will be within the purview of the 17th Assembly as we look at things like inclusive schooling and pupil/teacher ratios where we know that there are opportunities there, but as some Member said, maybe the information wasn’t clear enough so a decision...

I do recollect the discussion around the committee table about that basically geographical tracking information. I had understood it had been provided, but I will check and I will commit to the Member that we will get it to him during the life of this session, as he has requested. Thank you.

The focus of this budget, as I indicated very clearly being the last one of the 16th Assembly, is one that we want to consolidate, one that we want to try to get as many things completed or firmly on the rails as we can during the life of this Assembly. We are continuing the work of the Strategic Initiatives committees. One of the intents was the very thing the Members talked about, was to write down the stovepipes, to get people in the room, senior government officials into areas outside their direct departmental responsibilities, not only to deal with the relatively small amounts of money...

We will have to look very carefully, because the Member implies somehow the amount of work we do through contractors, which is a substantial amount of money, will be able to be picked up by employees who, by my own estimation, are fully engaged. It’s partially a reflection of the demand for things to get done as a government that we face in trying to respond to the very high level of expectation. I don’t disagree that there are probably opportunities to be more efficient in how we deal with contracts, and we’ll commit to working with the Members as well as the bureaucracy to see how we can be...

As I’ve indicated, we have to do both. We have a program now where we, as a government, hire graduates on an interim basis, give them an opportunity to get settled and possibly find full-time employment. The Make Your Mark Program is critical. We hear it from businesses that they have trouble recruiting staff, many of them professional or very specialized kind of skills. We’re investing and working with over 40 companies, trying to meet their employment needs by assisting them. We know we have to do both. We’re investing significant amounts of money encouraging students to go out to school. We...

The Greenhouse Gas Strategy and the Heritage Fund, neither are hollow exercises. There was a lot of work done to get the infrastructure, to get the tool in place, the legislation in place. The Heritage Fund will be there. If the Legislative Assembly chooses to identify money to put into the Heritage Fund, then money will be put into the Heritage Fund.

First we have to get the legislation through. It’s not through yet. It’s going to committee. We’re going to bring it in for first and second reading. It will be approved very late in this Assembly, so we have to get that done. Then it will be the...