Michael Miltenberger

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I agree with the Member’s assessment and we have been talking about this for quite some time now, about the impacts of climate change and global warming and extreme weather events. We have been dealing with the costs to us, as a government, now for quite some time. I think back to things like having to replace all the wooden piles as the temperatures warmed and they thawed out and turned to, basically, mush. Either change the piles or replace the buildings, not to mention all the other impacts. So, I agree and we are going to be working collectively here to deal with...

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.

I’d like to add a bit more information before we get to that conclusion the Member has made.

It takes time for departments to address issues that arise from an audit. For example, all the recommendations from 2011-12 audits are now complete, while only 62 percent of the recommendations of the 2012-13 audits are currently considered complete. These things take time. Some of them are more complex and stretch out a little bit longer.

Audit reports, recommendations and follow-up are internal management documents. In that regard, the GNWT follows a standard set out by the Institute of Internal...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. There have been the required discussions about the issue that the Member raises, and if the money is not voted on or approved, then the department will be having to absorb those costs from their existing budget. But it’s clear to all parties here that this is not the process that we have laid out to be followed. We have the issues before the House that have been identified by the Members and it’s been dealt with entirely within the government and now we’re here having judgment passed on this request. Thank you.