Michael Miltenberger

Mr. Speaker, we’re in the process of pulling in a final response. A lot of what is in this letter, I’m assuming once again… I look at my A.(2) and I don’t know if we’re actually looking at the same document, which is the trouble, I suppose, with documents that aren’t before this House. Thank you.

The world has evolved significantly in its awareness of climate change and greenhouse gases and the need to be as proactive as possible. The process that we are envisioning is going to be a broad one that’s going to involve, of course, government, but community governments, individuals, industry. The world and the country are moving towards cap and trade systems. Many jurisdictions have already put caps and cap and trade systems in place, put a price on carbon. That discussion is now going to take place in the Northwest Territories to see where we can get agreement to end up, recognizing once...

Mr. Chairman, two things to be more specific, within the Northwest Territories there is an extensive amount of water monitoring done but it is fragmented across very many departments and different levels of government. One of the plans is within the Territory to come up with a comprehensive water monitoring strategy that will identify all the resources, how do we better link them and identify the gaps of what needs to be better monitored. The other critical piece is going to be the negotiations on the bilateral agreement with Alberta and B.C. where we are going to be coming to the table with...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As we’ve indicated right from the start, there’s a whole number of factors that have affected the Bathurst herd. It exists in the most heavily populated part of the Territory. There are extensive road networks now where there never used to be. There are hunting pressures. There is resource development. There are climate change issues. These have all combined to affect things like the general health of the animals, the calf survival rate, the birthrate of calves and how many do survive. There are predation impacts as well. When you combine them all together and when...

I haven’t yet used in this session in due course and the fullness of time, however, I will say that we are in discussions with Finance Canada. Finance Canada has indicated to us that they have this on their agenda, but they are now very preoccupied pulling their own budget together. So we are in ongoing discussions with Finance Canada about the resolution to this particular issue. As soon as we have anything to report, we will be coming back to committee. Thank you.

I would suggest that the $60 million this Legislature and the business plans that have been approved and the direction that has been taken by the department is a clear reflection of the political decision by this Legislature. Public Works and Services has a very ambitious plan to continue the retrofits. We are looking at concluding all, as the Minister of MACA indicated, the community energy plans. We’re committed to working with communities to make the transition. As well, we have significant funds in the budget to encourage homeowners to convert to more energy efficient appliances or wood...

Mr. Chairman, I have a list of all of the new positions in the regions in headquarters. I would be happy to share those and seasonal positions. I could read them for the record if you like or I can just agree to share it with the committee.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The ‘08-09 are based on actual. We’re currently not concluded this year yet, so we’ll know and we’ve got another figure to start at $100,000. We won’t know the actuals for some time for the coming year either, but I don’t think we’ve concluded the final accounting for this year, but I’ll ask the deputy minister to maybe clarify that.

Just for the record, it wasn’t the Auditor General, it was Finance Canada that came back to us about how we treat and account for that money. I don’t believe that the Discovery Air loan had any bearing on how we were told we have to account for the money. I understand in Yukon it’s accounted for differently as well. I don’t believe the Discovery Air loan, which in fact is generating enough revenue so this fund does not lose money, had a bearing on this current issue with Finance Canada.

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...