Michael Miltenberger

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The roadside parks are the responsibility of ITI. We work closely with ITI, and as the Member has indicated, ITI clearly has done a very fine job in advertising and promoting and maintaining and building up the park. As a government, we have every expectation that we’re going to maintain that level of service. Thank you.

Yes, I will report back to committee on the results of the discussion with the department. I will make sure we go back and look at the documents the Member has referred, and we’ll look to what we think is possible and share that with committee. We will be happy, of course, to appear before committee to have a further, more detailed discussion.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There are no imminent plans at this point. I have listened to the Member’s statement with interest and I will be following up with the department.

Power lineman is a very specialized, highly qualified trade where there are electrical skills required but also the ability to work under very significant and extreme circumstances, often on pole trucks, in some cases climbing poles, so it’s not a type of profession that you can just have folks train partially. But I take the Member’s point and concern about having a permanent facility and capacity based in the region, and I’ll be happy to have a discussion with him possibly tomorrow morning, bright and early at breakfast. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We have an emergency rating system. The folks on the ground in the communities, in Inuvik for example, make determinations. They talk with the folks in the various communities and then they look at the severity of the situation in each community. The one that is the most critical is the one that we try to get to the fastest and the soonest. If you have a community where there are hundreds of people with no power for a great length of time, that is a critical emergency in the wintertime. So, we work to the utmost, working around the weather, keeping safety in mind, but...

There are 266 days left to the next election. I will commit to the Member to have a fulsome discussion with the chairman and president of the Power Corporation, and I will be able to report back to the Member on the content of the outcome of that discussion. Thank you.

We have some personnel on the ground. We have some that we use and we try to look to work with other folks who have some kind of similar capacity.

In terms of do we have any particular linemen, I would have to confirm and get back to the Member on that. Thank you.

I was making the comments about the Member being a fountain of good ideas because we all know he tends to hide his light under a bushel and he’s very self-deprecating and humble, so I wanted to give him that little bit of promotion to help with his battered self-image.

So I will add that to the list that I have as I meet regularly with ENR and we will give it the consideration it deserves. Thank you.

The issue has been flagged. It’s on our to-do list. We’ve been using the resources and capacity that we do have to look at the full rollout of our electronic waste recycling in addition to all of the other recycling programs that we’ve come into in the last few years. The barrel one, one raised in the House, as well, by the Member for Sahtu, for example, for the vehicles that have been abandoned are all things on our list that we intend to get to but not any time in the life of this government.

The energy programs have been consolidated in Public Works and Services including those incentive programs. Those incentive programs are funded. There are different types of programs for energy-efficient appliances, for assistance with installation of solar and other alternative energy sources, so that opportunity currently exists in those programs and will now be handled by Public Works and Services and the Minister of Public Works and Services.