Michael Miltenberger

Mr. Speaker, I give notice that on Monday, February 9, 2015, I will move that Bill 44, An Act to Amend the Hospital Insurance and Health and Social Services Administration Act, be read for the first time. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It’s still in planning, but it will be at least two positions.

I’ll get that detailed information for the Member. Thank you.

I would just like to clarify for the record for my young colleague for Yellowknife Centre, that a point of fact is when supplementary appropriations are voted on, we do see them, we see them visible all around us. They help us provide services to adults down south for health. They help fund projects. They help move money forward in the budget, so we can do the Tuk-Inuvik highway. Every cent that we put into supplementary appropriations and approve in this House is visible and brings added value to the Northwest Territories.

With regard to the Members, if there’s a wish, we can pull together an...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Further to my Return to Written Question 20-17(5), I wish to table the following document, entitled “NWT Debt.” Thank you.

The broad issue that has generated this debate and the one that we have been looking at as a government and the Assembly and what the charrette was focused on was the cost of living and the need to bring down the cost of energy, the need to look at things like roads and creating the conditions for economic development. The broad discussion of how we’re structured to deliver energy is an important one. The distribution side, the transmission side, for us, currently, as the Premier indicated, there is a franchise request possibly coming out from the Town of Hay River, and as the Premier...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m able to speak as the Minister responsible for the NWT Power Corporation to what is within the purview of the Power Corporation, which is the rates that we have set, the thermal zone and the hydro zone, the rates being subsidized to the Yellowknife rate for our residences at a 700 kilowatt an hour cap and those types of things. I’m not in a position to speak on the NUL what I understand the Member’s asking about or anything that’s not within the specific purview of the Power Corporation. Thank you.

Health and Social Services, for example, is engaged in a transformative exercise to address that very issue, looking at avoiding duplication, the back office improvements, efficiencies, and move away from multiple disconnected boards to a more efficient one-board model. So that’s one example.

As well, we know there’s an interest and there’s a recognition between departments on the infrastructure side, where departments are now collaborating on building infrastructure that we need in communities: garages, warehouses, those types of things. We’ve had discussions with Deline, for example, where...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would point out this is my third go-around in the Northwest Territories and we did three roundtables in Yellowknife last government where we brought people in. What has become clear to me – and it’s credit, I would suggest, both to having small communities and a small government – a lot of the concerns that I’ve heard going from community to community in the regional centres is very consistent with the concerns I’ve heard raised by the Members in this House. A lot of them focus on almost identical issues.

The people are very, for the most part, well informed who show...

There are two tools that are available that are in existence and have been for some time. Of course, the first one being the Business Incentive Policy which provides northern preference, in some cases local preference. Then, of course, there’s the opportunity from time to time, if all the right conditions are met, where negotiated contracts will be considered.