Michael Miltenberger

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We don’t have that level of detail. We can provide that to the committee. Thank you.

Yes, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As we work towards the transition document, I mean, if there is sufficient impetus, this could possibly be flagged for consideration, but in the life of the next 280 days until the next election we’re going to be fully occupied concluding and working on all the things we need to go get our business concluded and make sure that we do have that orderly transition. The intention will be not to spend a lot of time on this particular issue at this time.

The Power Corporation does have a rate of return, but as has been demonstrated over the last number of years, there have been cost pressures on the Power Corporation that far exceed to manage without the government’s ability to come and cushion the blow on the ratepayers. The 37 or 38 million dollars we put in to cushion the impact of what would have been a rate cliff because the prices of fuel hadn’t been raised over the last number of years. The most recent one would have been the low water surcharge that we’ve covered off as a contribution to the Power Corporation. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. That would be Hay River, Yellowknife, Providence, Wekweeti, Enterprise, Trout Lake. Thank you.

Let me give a couple of examples. There are a legion I could give, but let me give a couple.

The Western Arctic Geomatics Centre we’re setting up in Inuvik. It came up that we need to look at getting stuff out of Yellowknife; we need to tie into the work of the fibre optic line; we need to do a better job now that we’re the land owners post-devolution, and we need to invest money to do that and we’ve done that with the Western Geomatics.

We committed to decentralization, and one of the places that we’re going to decentralize to: some positions from ITI parks to Hay River.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. When you go out on budget dialogues, it’s a commitment that takes a number of weeks. There’s a Swedish word that caught my eye that sort of lays out some of the challenges of that task. The Swedish word is resfeber. It’s the restless beat of a traveller’s heart before the journey begins, a mixture of anxiety and anticipation. Every time I go out and go around the territory, I always wonder how it’s going to go. I look forward to going out to the communities to meet with people no matter who shows up, not only in the rooms where we are but in the coffee shops and in the...

To dismiss out of hand the initiatives to become more efficient in our hiring, to empower our people to go down south on hard-to-fill positions to be able to make on-the-spot job offers, to make us more competitive in terms of how we do that, to say that the Nominee Program that will hopefully increase the number of seats available with the expedited process, cut the times down to six months would help bring, hopefully, hundreds of people into the Northwest Territories, plus their families is not worth the effort, I think doesn’t do justice to the complexity and the going back to the issue of...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. One quick word about the diamond mines. We have a GDP of about $3.6 billion a year. Of that, half of that comes from the diamond mines. So when you look what they pay in royalties, but you have to combine that with all the money and value added that comes into the territory, that if we didn’t have those diamond mines and the $1.6 billion or so that they contribute to our economy, we’d be having a considerably more difficult conversation in this House.

The approach that we are taking in an area that has some of the highest costs of living in the country is to look at...

Those franchise agreements are arrangements between the communities and power provider. I would have to commit to the Member to find out the length of time of the agreements. I don’t have that knowledge readily at my fingertips. The GNWT does not have a role to play as the communities look at their franchise arrangements. For example, the community of Inuvik just signed an agreement with the Inuvik Gas for a 10-year period. That was work they carried out as the community government. Thank you.