Michael Miltenberger

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I move, seconded by the honourable Member…

Thank you, Madam Chair. In this Assembly and the previous Assembly, for sure, have had very ambitious agendas. We’ve had very significant commitment to trying to beef up our infrastructure. During the life of this government, as I pointed out in the budget address, we have delivered or will have committed to deliver about 1.2 or 1.5 billion dollars of infrastructure. The last government was in the same circumstance.

We made a conscious decision. If I could point out, when we went down, when we hit the big economic crisis in 2008, we made a conscious decision to spend money, like every other...

Thank you, Madam Chair. I have with me Mike Aumond, deputy minister of finance; and Jamie Koe, the director of the Management Board Secretariat.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just request a moment of the committee’s time as we wrap up our final budget of Environment and Natural Resources. As we’ve been doing, we appreciate all the questions and feedback and support from Members. As I’ve been sitting here in the House and at the table again, I’ve been thinking I’ve been doing this, this is my 20th budget, my 14th as a Minister and my ninth as Environment Minister. I’ve served with some of you four years, some eight, some 12 and my longest-serving travelling companion, Madam Groenewegen from Hay River South, 20 years.

I just wanted to...

Thank you, Madam Chair. When it comes to the vacancies there’s any number, a host of things that could affect those particular jobs and you’d have to go over them almost position by position. Is it maternity leave issues? Is it a transfer assignment issue? Is it one where it’s difficult to fill and we’re doing a contract arrangement? As a government we haven’t fully funded the benefits for departments. We fund $17 million and it’s actually $23 million, so there’s a 6 percent spread and departments have been told to fund that from within. So what departments have done historically is looked at...

Thank you, Madam Chair. The purpose of Bill 43, An Act to Amend the Borrowing Authorization Act, is to increase the short-term borrowing limit from $275 million to $300 million.

The amendment is being proposed in order to provide the short-term borrowing authority needed to make a $25 million corporate income repayment on March 31, 2015. The current limit will be exceeded by approximately $12 million once this payment is made. On April 1, 2015, the GNWT will once again be within the current limit making this a short-term cash requirement, however a necessary one. That concludes my opening...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I’ll get the deputy to respond. We do have five operational pilots that I think are proving out the case, but I’ll ask the deputy to expand further on that. Thank you.

As I indicated as clearly as I could in the budget address – I thank the Member for raising the issue – on a go-forward basis it’s going to be absolutely imperative that our expenditures don’t exceed our revenues and that we are putting in place the pieces that we need to have to ensure that everything we do keeps us under that operational ceiling. The short-term borrowing limit is something we want to free up as well. Three hundred million, $275 million, I mean, if we are able to hit our fiscal plan, we’ll have it, but we won’t be necessarily required to use it, barring more catastrophic...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I listened to the Member’s statement about bullying with interest. In regard to his question, the answer is yes.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This particular line item is one that has been funding a lot of the work that we’ve done on caribou, all the surveys, all the work that’s been done across the North for just about all the herds, trying to stay on top of things. It helped fund our involvement in all different regions with all the different co-management boards and in the unsettled claim areas.

After April 1st we’re going to be working very hard internally to see how we can cover this off from within. So it did what it was intended to do, but we haven’t had that money added to the base in ENR, so our...