Michael Miltenberger

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to thank the Member for his comments. I’ve been now in this Chamber with the Member, this is going on our eighth year and I just made note of one of his comments that I put quotation marks around. I never thought I’d hear him say this in the House, and maybe he’ll say I’ve taken it out of context, but I was quite struck by his comment about how we have to be conservative. That’s not something I would normally tie to the Member.

The question I would ask, and we have to ask, is: How do we build the territory, and what investments do we make, and what are...

On a go forward basis, the Member is correct, when you do a renovation as opposed to a new build, there has to be these extra, very critical steps taken to protect the quality of the air, infection control and those types of things. I know this personally, as well, because we just went through that situation at the health centre in Fort Smith. It requires that extra special step which will be done. We will ensure that, of course, we will use all the resources available, including all the human resources available. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We’re not, in effect, losing jobs. What we’re trying to do is find people to fill the jobs that we have that are in many cases going begging. We have met as a government now numerous times.

We have a working committee that’s looking at a whole host of things, very simple things like the issue that has bedeviled many of us in many of the departments from following up with our students has been this issue that ECE had with confidentiality and an inability to share the information on students in school, where they are, what they’re studying, so that we can in fact make sure...

Yes, we are aware of the committee’s concern and of course, from a business perspective, we know that that number is too small. We have looked at sort of a 10-year rolling average and it would be about $10 million. So we’re going to look, based on our work and committee’s recommendations, we’re going to be looking at how we can have a base budget that’s more reflective of the reality. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. That final calculation is still being compiled and we’ll have that in the coming weeks. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, I wish to table the following three documents, entitled “Northwest Territories Capital Estimates 2015-2016;” Government of the Northwest Territories Response to Motion 14-7(5), Expansion of Policing and Nursing Services;” and “Government of the Northwest Territories Response to Motion 17-17(5), Interim Measures for the Commercial Harvest of Wild Mushrooms.”

Finally, Mr. Speaker, on behalf of the Minister of Justice, I wish to table the following document, entitled “Government of the Northwest Territories Response to Committee Report 9-17(5), Report on the Review of the 2012-2013...

Thank you. That type of deliberation and review is part of the critical debriefing that’s underway and that I’ve just committed to sharing with committee when it’s done early in the New Year as we look at coming for the winter session. Thank you.

What we have laid out is a good, solid plan on a go-forward basis that we believe is going to show results. We are making a lot of the structural, organizational and procedural changes to do that. We have initiated a much closer working relationship with the private sector to make this a combined and joint effort so it’s not just strictly government.

But I can tell you, from a simple math point of view, if we filled the vacancies that we have, then we would address the issue that the Member is talking about many times over, and if we would recruit all the students that we’re giving SFA to, to...

Thank you. The Member is a fine example of the success of our education system. We’re not excluding the fact that it’s a loss. What we have done is started a program, an initiative that we’ve given ourselves a five-year time horizon, because we recognize that these things take time to sort things out, to turn things around, to do the work that’s necessary, to make the changes that are necessary, to do the things with HR, for example, where we want to be able to go south and enable the folks that go south to take interviews and do job offers on the spot so that we can be way more timely in how...

Thank you. We are at work in terms of a review, cleaning up after fire season, doing the final accounting and then doing the critical debrief is underway. Then early in the new year, we’ll have that work done and we expect to be able to go forward with those findings to committee to have a thorough discussion in anticipation of the upcoming fire season. Thank you.