Robert Bouchard

The Minister indicated he had a meeting previously with the federal Minister.

Can the Minister indicate to me when the next planned meeting or FPT on this type of situation would be coming up? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Again, I guess we’re being handcuffed and pressured into just approving this $800,000 expenditure, because Cabinet has put it in a supplementary estimate that we have had limited time to review, have had limited time to have that discussion. I mean, we expressed our concerns last week, but with limited input and time to do anything about it. We’re talking about positions and we talked about positions and we talked about the budgets going up every year, and now we’re going to add another five positions to it. Never mind all the discussions I’ve talked about in this House about decentralization...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As you are well aware, Hay River has a long history as being the NWT fishing industry capital. It’s exciting to hear that this government is investing $1.3 million through its Economic Opportunities Strategy to this industry.

Last week, along with members of the NWT Fisherman’s Federation, I was glad to hear a plan go forward on how we’re going to revitalize this industry and how we are going to implement a new fishing plant in the community of Hay River. This is a great renewable resource that we have in the Northwest Territories. We need to take full advantage of it...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I’d just like to bring up a couple of other issues. The difficulty that I’m having with this process is the timing of it. Like I indicated, the fact that this communication report was done in November, I guess committee has had some discussion with the department about it, and I think it was brought up on Friday about the supplementary exercises we are going through and some of the short notices we are getting on the reviews and the process and the fact that all of a sudden we hear now this money, these five positions are being added to the budget.

It seems like a very...

Then I guess I’ve got a question about this communication report that was done. We’ve been given the information, as far as this report was done, in November. So, it should have gone through our regular budgeting process.

Why cannot we, as a government, get a report in November and have it ready for our March implementation of funding in the March review? Now we’re back here on June 1st looking at something that we don’t really have full direction on, we haven’t had full discretion about it, we haven’t had a business planning process to go through. I guess, why does it take so long to get that...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I know some of these people are from different jurisdictions, but obviously they’re coming to the Northwest Territories. We know that we’re in a drought situation. They may want to live in the Northwest Territories permanently, so we should probably promote that as well.

I know already in the process that we’re seeing pressure under our ITI facilities, our parks facilities. Is there a plan for the Department of ITI to look at how they’re going to use those facilities? I know there are people who are not actually staying in those facilities but using the showers and...

Department of Public Works and Services, operations expenditures, asset management, not previously authorized, $480,000.

Thank you, Minister Miltenberger. Next on the list I have Mr. Dolynny.

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Minister of Public Works and Services, Mr. Beaulieu.

Total budget, not previously authorized, $25,337 million.