Michael Miltenberger

The current contract was a negotiated contract, and I’d ask the Minister about the future years and what the intent of the department would be.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the Member’s concern. As the Member is going to be tracking and worrying about the upcoming snowfall and winter and then the coming summer, so too are all of us as we look at the level of drought and what kind of water we can expect this coming spring and summer and hope for the water levels to go up to have a wetter season in the southern part of the territory. There’s little in the short-term we can do to mitigate that, but clearly, as we look longer term at climate change, global warming, we have to continue to strive to do our part to look at...

As I indicated, this money is new money. It’s not money coming out of the various school boards. Should the money not be approved, then Education, Culture and Employment would be absorbing that cost from their existing budget.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have with me Mike Aumond, deputy minister of Finance; and Mr. Olin Lovely, director of the Management Board Secretariat. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We have captured all the numbers that we think are going to be there between now and the end of March. But as I indicated earlier, in order to err on the side of caution and to make sure that we have enough room to respond and to keep the government operational, we’re going to come forward with a request, through legislation, to increase that amount from $275 million to $300 million. Thank you.

We, of course, whenever possible, share as fully as we can as a matter of practice with internal audits. There is sometimes highly sensitive, sometimes personnel information, sometimes information that may form the basis for a criminal investigation, so I am unable to commit to the request by the Member. Thank you.

I would encourage the Member to think back that we manage a $1.8 billion budget. We have supps on a regular basis and nearly 100 percent of the time, over 99 percent of the time the system works. We have an issue with this supplementary appropriation, which is a relatively small amount, as the Member said, that didn’t follow all the steps in the process, and we acknowledge that. There’s no plan to change the process because it’s a good process. There is a requirement and need to have the checks and balances and accountability to this Legislature and it’s why we’re here today laying this out...

In the seven audit projects concluded, the audit reports completed in 2013-14 made 46 recommendations. Twenty-two of the 46 audit recommendations have been implemented to date. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. To err on the side of caution in making sure that we have the ability to continue to pay all our required debts and bills and make payroll and all those type of things, we’re going to put a bill on the table that’s going to request that we raise that $275 to $300 million for the short-term. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I’ll touch on a number of items and then I’ll ask Mr. Neudorf to speak to some of the more technical issues.

As we talk about the borrowing limit, we have the soon-to-be resolved issue of the borrowing limit of the federal government to be dealt with. I can say with confidence that the borrowing limit’s going to go up. The issue that has not been determined is how much. That’s an issue that is coming to fruition here in the very near future.

This project was four years and the majority of the work was scheduled for three. We have a northern contractor that is now up and...