Robert C. McLeod

Mr. Speaker, first of all, I have to make a correction. I said "during this Assembly." I actually meant during this sitting of the 18th Legislative Assembly, so we will ensure we have that tabled. The Member's second question there, I will commit to having a review of this. The Member is correct, solecourse contract limits raising, I think it would be an ideal time for us to have a look at how we provide oversight to these contracts, so I will commit to that. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

As Members are aware, we have a very extensive mandate that requires a lot of investment. To meet that goal, we had looked at $150 million. I did speak during the O and M budget session four months ago that it was going to be some short term pain for a longer term gain, and I did commit that the exercise would be over two years, even though there might be a residual effect in years three and four. But could we meet? We would need to have further investment, and we work very closely with our counterparts in Ottawa to try to get further investments. The better position we are in financially, we...

Mr. Speaker, I wish to advise Members that the Honourable Bob McLeod will be absent from the House today for a personal matter. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

As I said before, I recognize that the $150 million was removed from our mandate, but our fiscal responsibility still stands. As to what the savings might be used for, we still have to make that decision as an Assembly. We go through our Capital Plan and our Business Plan, we will have our discussions with committee as to where we can make those future investments through the budget planning process for both capital and O and M.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I wish to table the following four documents entitled "Follow-up Letter to Oral Question 142-18(2): Status of Regional Recruitment Program," "Follow-up Letter to Oral Question 143-18(2): Impacts of GNWT Job Losses," "Follow-up Letter to Oral Question 158-18(2): Aboriginal Representation on the GNWT Public Service,: and "Follow-up letter to Oral Question 270-18(2): Reform of the Canada Pension Plan."

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, to the Member's question on the technical team, they're coming up in a couple of weeks. We're not quite sure the makeup of the team or what their schedule is at the moment. However, as we become aware of their schedule and who's part of the team, we will communicate that with the Members. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I believe this is going to be an issue that we're going to be faced with more of in the future as more traffic is travelling through the Northwest Passage, so I think it's good planning to have our governments ready to deal with any situations that might arise, and we're hoping that they don't.

Our staff from Inuvik and Yellowknife, we've been involved with the federal science tables, which the Government of Canada agencies with authority to respond to these types of incidents. We're not the lead in this, but we do provide, we will provide support to Canada...

No, they haven't. They do have a technical team that's coming to the Northwest Territories within the next couple of weeks to meet with our technical folks to have some discussion, and as I stated earlier they have said to us that they recognize the uniqueness of the Northwest Territories and they will take that into consideration. As far as a mechanism, though, they are going to meet with our folks. Once they have some discussions with them and then we have our public engagement, then we will see what the pricing mechanism may look like.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We work very closely with our northern counterparts because the carbon pricing mechanism that Ottawa came up with is going to have an effect on the three territories. We managed to get it into the architecture document that is going to be considered by the first ministers at their upcoming meeting and we also made it quite clear to our counterparts and the federal minister the effect that proposed carbon pricing is going to have on the Northwest Territories. They've committed to recognizing the uniqueness of the Northwest Territories as they move forward.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I have a Return to Oral Question asked by Ms. Green on June 29, 2016, regarding Reporting of the Government Fiscal Responsibility Policy. The Fiscal Responsibility Policy is focused on committing the GNWT to prudent borrowing to ensure long-term fiscal sustainability. If the GNWT does not achieve sufficient cash from operating surpluses to finance 50 per cent of infrastructure investments in a fiscal year, the GNWT would be required to adopt a fiscal strategy to ensure sufficient operating surpluses were achieved over the subsequent two fiscal periods to...