Michael Miltenberger

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. For the record, I appreciate the Member’s comments. We had a fairly lengthy discussion about this yesterday. The comments I made yesterday I just leave stand on the record with regard to the Member’s concerns. Thank you.

This is a design/build contract road project. It’s the set price, $230 million. We need to make sure that we give the contractor all the tools, both fiscal and otherwise, that he needs to get the job done so he can move the design requirements and stay within budget.

This allows us to catch up to the road that wasn’t constructed last year because it was a slow start. This is not a gift or benefit to the contractor. That’s the only reason we are doing it. It’s not because he just decided it would be better off for him just because.

We are all very, very conscious of our obligation and the...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. First I just want to reassure the Member and the people listening in here that we do all this money management with complete regard for our fiscal situation, which is why we get the clean audits and which is why we have the Aa1 credit rating and we managed to absorb some of these unexpected shocks because we always keep in mind looking after the taxpayers’ dollars as if it were our own. So I want to reassure the Member of that.

When the project was started, it was flagged right from the beginning that cash flow adjustment would probably be required, we just didn’t know...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just note that there’s a clause in the current contract that does also allow for a three-year extension of the current contract.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the Member’s assessment, her bottom line assessment that at the end of the day it was a good decision to put the $20 million to offset the rates. The intent was not to make Members look bad. The intent was to deal with a pressing issue that was going to put all of our constituents under needless or extra financial burden at a time when we’re all struggling with how do we deal with the cost of living. We do place great value on protocols. We spend an enormous amount of time when we do business on process, making sure we’ve touched every base that needs to...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Once the start-up is over, the anticipation is that it would become a part of the regular budgeting process and not necessarily through the supplementary appropriation process.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. In regards to the first issue raised by the Member, we provide weekly updates to MLAs during fire season and we will add a financial component to that to allow Members to track, as do we, the costs and expenditures during fire season.

In regard to the second issue, I want to, of course, concur with the Member that Northerners have reacted very favourably to the $20 million that was used to offset the proposed rate increase, and the reason that we did $20 million - $15 for the rest of this fiscal year, $5 million to carry us over to June – is because we had to give the...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. The Member is correct in this case. Building season and the school year got way ahead of the legislative and budgetary process that we run and we are currently in. So the Member is correct. There were commitments made. There was a need to be ready and so the work was, certainly in these instances, done, contrary to what the law of general application for supplementary appropriations and getting approval before you spend the money, in order to meet the program needs, as the Member alluded to. Thank you.

Yes, Mr. Chair. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. It’s new money. Thank you.