Michael Miltenberger

Yes, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Things like the firefighting, it could be infrastructure, it could be any requirements that come up during the course of a year that the government or the Assembly decides expenditures are required. I’ll ask the deputy if he wants to add any other further type of examples.

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, Mr. Chairman. In regards to the timber, I just wanted to make the observation, similar to wildlife or anything else that we do, is you can’t manage what you can’t count. So it’s a challenge in all areas. It’s a challenge, for example, with hunting and reporting. We’re working out ways we can get those numbers because it’s absolutely critical, as we see, when you look at managing any kind of resource like that. So, that’s the fundamental goal, not to infringe but on a conservation basis to be able to manage. You can’t manage what you can’t count. Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, yes, we’ll look at talking to our colleagues from Lands and such. We can probably get a number of folks that live outside community boundaries. Thank you.

I just noted I didn’t respond to one specific question with regard to waste management and old vehicles. The answer is still the same. It’s on our list and we are going to work our way down there. We have been focusing on getting a territory-wide electronic waste recycling program on the go as our next big initiative. So, once again, it’s a question of time and capacity. There are old vehicles. Mr. Hawkins mentioned tires. We’ve had, as well, the issue of thousands of 45-gallon drums that are littered across the landscape. We know there are a lot of things we need to get to and we do have that...