Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There are two things, two main approaches we need to take as we deal with the impacts of climate change.

First, we are going to have to adapt to the changing world, and the changes that are coming have been coming for decades and the changes that were needed to be put into effect are going to take decades to be impacted. In the meantime, we have been adapting to the permafrost issues that the Member has mentioned. We are adapting and paying for issues like low water, but at the same time we are investing millions, tens upon millions of dollars on alternate energy...

Thank you, Madam Chair. I thank the Members for their comments. I will address the broad issues we’ve made note of. There are some fairly specific departmental issues the Ministers will be addressing when they appear before the House to defend their budgets.

With regard to some of the common issues, I appreciate the positive comments on the budget. It is a challenge to balance the many competing needs with not enough resources. The reality is this is not so much about restraint as it is about living within our means. We are spending almost $2 billion for 42,000 people and we have expenditure...

Thank you, Madam Chair. I have with me the deputy minister of Finance, Mike Aumond; and the deputy secretary to the FMB, Sandy Kalgutkar. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I appreciate the second opportunity to try to get this through the House. I move, seconded by the honourable Member for Yellowknife South, that Bill 43, An Act to Amend the Borrowing Authorization Act, be read for the first time.

We’re looking at a number of things. In fact, we’re looking at the whole range of challenges as we look at how we’re structured historically and as we look to the future, distribution is definitely one. The question was posed at the Energy Charrette, it was posed by myself to the attendees at the charrette with the question of how many distributors of power do we need in the Northwest Territories to make this as efficient as possible. That is a question that we have to look at. We know we have to look at generation in thermal communities, bring down the costs. Total reliance on diesel is not...

The intent of the Territorial Power Support Program was to make sure that thermal communities are subsidized to the Yellowknife rate, and as the Members have heard, there’s one hydro community whose rates are higher than the Yellowknife rate and that’s Hay River. Thank you.

The budget lays out our ongoing commitment to alternative energy, to the rebate incentive programs, to working with communities, but I think the biggest commitment is there in the charrette, and the Premier referenced it in one of his earlier responses, that as we deal with our borrowing limit and we get the borrowing limit raised, one of the key areas we’re looking at, and the budget address says this, as well, that we know that energy issues, especially generation issues in Yellowknife and all the thermal communities are critical issues to bring down the cost of living, reduce our reliance...

We have a Greenhouse Gas Strategy, as well, to address the Member’s initial comment on his second question. It is up for renewal this year. We are going to hit the targets we have in there. We are looking at modernizing and updating it to reflect the current realities.

When it comes to development, we have a very fundamental approach of sustainability and balance that’s required with protection of the environment and resource development. We have quite a rigorous environmental assessment and review process for all project applications where ENR, ITI and Lands work together collaboratively to...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. This whole initiative has been one of acceleration that the federal government and other countries were very interested when we started talking about this project in the last government and they were giving us a lot of verbal support. As we move forward through the last government, late in the last government, but this government where we worked with the Assembly and we ramped up our interest and we’ve moved this project from the political debate to the approval of the money and project design to, as the Member said, the actual start-up of the installation and the fibre...

The first year has been a planning year and we’ve been working with industry and we are looking at changes to the procedures. For example, in Human Resources, where we want to be able to go south to job fairs or recruiting, that we’re going to empower the folks that go down there to look at the resumes and do interviews. If the people meet the criteria, then a conditional job offer can be made pending the checking of references. That’s as opposed to the current process where we have to come back and months go by and people wander away. That’s one thing.

We are expecting and the Minister of ECE...