Michael Miltenberger

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.

Thank you. The way our system is structured, communities make the choice of who they would like to make an agreement with to provide their electrical services. There’s a process through the franchise process to do that and communities have done that over the years. Thank you.

I as well am of the mind that when I built my own house that you can never have too much insulation. I’ve got R-45 in the walls, R-60-some in the roof. I never regretted it for a minute and it’s over 30 years. I don’t disagree with the Member. It’s an issue of capacity and timing, so we will have the discussions about it as the Member has asked us to. Will we be able to launch a full-blown program in the next number of weeks or days? I would suggest that there is going to be work needed to be done, resources found, and looking at our priority list to see where this would possibly fit.

The involvement of the territorial government in energy efficiency conservation, all the areas of retrofitting houses, making sure we’re using proper appliances, hot water heaters, wood stoves, LED lightbulbs, those types of things, are part of a process. We’d have to look at the money. If we’re going to be providing rebates or incentives, is it to renovations, is it going to be if you’re building a half-million dollar house? We’d have to put in a certain percentage to encourage you to go to R-40 in the walls, R-60 or 65 in the roof. There’s some discussion to be had, there’s costs to be...

We look at and listen carefully to the debate in this House, and of course, we will be having discussions about the Member’s questions. We’ll also be here, as I indicated in the House, before the House with our budgets. There are committee processes that we could talk about, as well, and we’re going to have to make choices to see what resources are available and other discussions related to this. As soon as we conclude this budget, of course, we will be putting the pieces in place for the next business planning process in anticipation of the transition to the 18th Assembly where, as well, this...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We will soon be before the House with our budget for the year, and we’d be happy to have that discussion in that forum if the Member would apply his fingers to the keyboard and lay out with clarity and detail the specifics of what he’s proposing. We will, of course, seriously take a look at it in that regard, as well, or through the appropriate committee of MLAs, special committees that are in place to deal with issues such as that. Either one of those forums, either or all would be where we’d be prepared to have that discussion with the Member. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. We appreciate the comments from the Members in regard to the lowering of the cost of living, which would be a way of improving services. We are very committed to that. I’ve indicated now quite a number of times, as we look at our borrowing limit we need to make these critical investments that are going to help us lower the cost of living and there are a couple of things that we can do and we are focusing on those. One is the cost of energy generation and look at how we do business. The other one is critical infrastructure that promotes economic development like the...