Michael Miltenberger

Thank you, Mr Chairman. This Legislature made a very significant commitment, political commitment, to structure an infrastructure to change how we generate energy, how we distribute, how we use it, and to reduce our carbon footprint and get off diesel fuel. What we have to do with biomass, there is a number of steps and we are on the way to doing some of that. We have to build the market, which is get the biomass infrastructure into the communities that use it. Then we have to look at managing the forests as a secondary step. Right now we import a lot of the wood pellets. There is some...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We’ll get that information and share it with committee members.

Mr. Chairman, I will let the deputy… He found some more information in his briefing book.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to talk about the unique process we are a part of in the review of the JRP report.

As an administrative decision-maker under the MVRMA, as Minister of ENR I have a unique role to play in the decision-making process. As such, I am part of a process which includes other federal responsible Ministers. Mr. Speaker, as a result of this relationship, I cannot act alone. I have a duty to exercise my functions in accordance with the principles of administrative fairness required of me as a responsible Minister under the MVRMA and I must work with my...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We work with the proponents. We, being the initiators and the pushers on this particular initiative, will also go to other governments, like the federal government. The challenge for us and community governments, as the Member knows, is we’ve been talking about it, we have an interested community but we are almost in a state of paralysis by analysis as we try to decide on the technology. Is there the perfect technology out there and if it is not, should we wait?

We have had the discussion but we have to, in year two, make some decisions with communities. We are doing...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. With me are Gary Bohnet, deputy minister of Environment and Natural Resources, and Ms. Nancy Magrum, director of finance, shared services for ENR and ITI.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The majority of work has been done in the South Slave and over into the Deh Cho. Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, the Department of ENR, of course, is very interested, as the government is as a whole, and our Traditional Knowledge Strategy, we’ve got money in the budget for implementation. We know we have money in the budget to deal with issues related to climate change, mitigation and adaptation. There are concerns about caribou. There are concerns about what’s happening to the water. There are concerns about what’s happening to the land. We’ve got money identified, for example, for studies on permafrost that can help us make better informed decisions in the appropriate, affected...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I do have opening comments. Mr. Chair, I am pleased to speak to the 2010-2011 Main Estimates for the Department of Environment and Natural Resources. The plan proposes total operational expenses of $65.7 million for the upcoming year. This is an 8 percent increase over last year.

As Members are aware, the mandate of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources is to promote and support the sustainable use and development of natural resources and to protect, conserve and enhance the NWT environment for the social and economic benefit of all NWT residents.

A range...

I’ve gone through the list of the things we’re working on as we work our way down. We do have some funds available and a program in place to get feedback on wastepaper and cardboard. We are doing some preliminary work on the e-waste. The area of tires, barrels, vehicles, waste oil are there for another day in that we’re stretched to capacity trying to do all the very many things plus all the things we’re already doing with the full recycling that we have on the go. Thank you.