Michael Miltenberger

Thank you, Mr. Chair. The Member is correct; for volumes of this nature we’d be looking at moving to a truck. There are suppliers in both communities, and once, if this money is approved, part of the planning is going to be for the suppliers to be prepared to upgrade their delivery capacity. Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, the Member is asking me as a Finance Minister if I were to agree the rough estimate would be the figures he has quoted. I have no reason to disagree with that rough estimate, but there is still the planning and technical work to be concluded, but yes. We know how much the Tuk road is costing. We know what the construction costs are and that in the region that we have a ballpark idea of the amount of money we are talking about. Yes, it will be an expensive road. Thank you.

Yes, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. There is work being done on this project. We have to come forward when we have the facts, figures and clear estimates. It is very difficult to book a figure on a project that has not been quantified or technically fully assessed. We also collectively know that we have far more needs than we have resources. Aklavik road is there. Work is being done. The commitment has been made. We fully intend to honour the commitment and conclude the work so that we can move this project forward. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, I wish to table the following document entitled Supplementary Appropriation No. 1 (Infrastructure Expenditures) 2009-2010. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Municipal and Community Affairs will be before this House soon. The issues about the type of arrangement, the funding arrangements, the formulas, which I believe are very generous, are there for review. We have built a 9 percent increase into the budget. We have given, though the Member may say it is neither here nor there, 16 cents a litre. I would suggest the pressure we were getting from the Members themselves about bringing that price down would indicate that 16 cents a litre is still nothing that could be sneezed at in this day and age and that we are constantly looking at ways to be as...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have with me Margaret Melhorn, deputy minister of Finance, and Sandy Kalgutkar, deputy secretary to FMB.

Mr. Chairman, during this time period we were faced with extremely high rising and extremely high fuel costs before they peaked out and started to come down. A lot of the budgeting was done trying to compensate for those costs that were going up in some cases on a monthly or sometimes even daily basis and reflects that pressure of that time. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am pleased to present Supplementary Appropriation No. 3, 2008-2009. This document outlines additional appropriations of $17.833 million for operation expenditures and $6 million for capital investment expenditures in the 2008-2009 fiscal year.

Major items for operation expenditures include:

$5.1 million for costs associated with Northwest Territories residents receiving hospital and physician services outside of the Northwest Territories;

$2.8 million for the increased costs associated with the new contractor between the Government of the Northwest Territories and NWT...

Mr. Chairman, the budget in 2007-08 was too low, resulting in a requirement for a supp which brought them up to the level that they are at. Then they used the money that they were given from their share of the supplementary appropriation to maintain that figure. The numbers we are seeing that would assume are costs over and above keeping their utility costs at that level that they got the supp for back in 2007-08.