Michael Miltenberger

I don’t have a definitive estimate at this point, but I will keep the House up to date when I do get that number. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the Member’s comments and his suggestions of where we could make life better. I want to reassure him that even though he challenges my memory, I have not forgotten what it’s like to be a Regular Member. I just want to reassure the Member of that as he constantly reminds me that I’ve forgotten, and I constantly remind him that I can well remember.

Unfortunately, I’m going to just tell him some things that he doesn’t want to hear. He says he knows the answers. The Department of Environment and Natural Resources is working, in my opinion, at capacity. In fact...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. We’re very interested in pursuing biomass initiatives. There are those projects underway in the community, as the Member indicates. As we achieve success, we’re interested in looking at those. There are other ones with the Willows and waste heat. I commend Fort McPherson, as well, for their initiative. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have with me Mr. Ernie Campbell and Ms. Susan Craig from Environment and Natural Resources, the deputy minister and finance.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I do. I am pleased to present the 2015-2016 Main Estimates for the Department of Environment and Natural Resources. Overall, the department’s estimates propose a decrease of $112,000, which is less than 1 percent over the 2014-2015 Main Estimates.

These estimates continue to support the objectives of limiting expenditure growth in order to sustain the long-term sustainability of the fiscal framework.

Highlights of the proposed estimates include:

$1.5 million for the continued implementation of the Water Stewardship Strategy, including the implementation of transboundary...

Those are all legitimate, real concerns that we are as well very cognizant of, and as we plan to affect repairs, those are issues that are being addressed. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. They are looking at the repairs. We, earlier on, made a contribution of $20 million to the Power Corporation to offset some of the diesel requirements due to the low water. This is related but not directly tied to that. However, we had anticipated that we would be saving some money with the lowering price of diesel and that we will be using that $20 million to offset the additional diesel costs as the appropriate repairs are affected. Thank you.

From my learned young colleague from Yellowknife Centre, I appreciate his passion sometimes verges on bavardage, but in this case I will respond.

We share the same interests and I put as much time in my job, I would venture to say at least as much time as the Member does.

So, we have laid out the discussion here fully. It’s now getting to where we are being repetitive. We are doing the things we think are necessary to promote economic growth, grow the population. The Member wants some kind of tax holiday. I would like him just to specify what exactly that means when we know our corporate tax...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I also feel like I’d be chewing everybody’s cabbage twice here if I repeated my long, fulsome answer that I just gave the Member for Sahtu that captures all the pieces that we’re putting in place to promote economic development, create conditions for growth, grow our population. All those things combine to do the things that the Member has asked about and I won’t repeat them in the same detail that I just did. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We believe that the strategy will work. The elements are there. We spent some time getting organized. The private sector, Dominion Diamonds, for example, has taken a very strong position to discourage the fly-out part of the operation, to encourage people to stay here. The Ministers of ECE as well as ITI have laid out through the Nominee Program the increases and the seats are available. Now that we’re going to aggressively pursue maximizing every seat that is there, we can see as much as, if it all works out, 800 people a year with these 250 seats that we can fill...