Robert C. McLeod

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have a list here with a lot of the positions. I don’t think it’s going to do any good if I just read it out. I’ll provide a copy of the list to Members. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I take the Member’s point that when we go into business planning next year, we can look at how we…even some of the wording that we use in the operations of diamond resource management and all that, it is a discussion that we could have.

As far as the enforcement, we do plan on having a very aggressive enforcement, as I said in my opening comments, because we believe that we are going to be inheriting, well we got 940,000 square kilometres that we are going to be responsible for compared to I believe it was 2,400 before. In those 940,000 square kilometres there are a lot...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. We will look at opportunities to try and get out into the regions as much as we can because it is quite important, but for those who come here, it is the community government that pays. I believe now their coming for training is eligible under the gas tax funding. So there are opportunities there too.

The Member makes a good point, though, and we’ll try and ensure we do what we can to try to make sure that we bring the training to the community where they will be needing it the most. We have some examples and the deputy minister just pointed out equipment operator training...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. The new Gas Tax Agreement is going to be for the next 10 years. I believe it’s indexed at 2 percent every year starting in 2014-15. Thank you.

The Member is correct. Despite the fact that we did transfer $2.73 million along with the 19 positions, we’ve had $3.43 million in forced growth. Part of it was the money that went in, $500,000 for the youth resiliency and $150,000, so it turned out that we were still $665,000 more, an increase of $665,000 over last year.

Mr. Chair, I don’t quite understand where the Member is going. Is he talking about lands that we had administered or is he talking on a go-forward basis? If this is on a go-forward basis, on a go-forward basis the board will set the security on the advice of government and it will hold money for them.

Are you talking, like, on Commissioner’s land that we had administered in the past? There was security that, on recommendation, could have been required on potentially any lease that we had out there, including cabin leases, but I don’t think it was something that was done regularly. Now, on a go...

Yes, we’ll make that committee report available.

I don’t think this money is factored in. It’s $15 million a year that they’ve been getting for the last number of years and it’s indexed this year. Community governments all know that this is probably the money that they’re getting because we do put out a MACA update in the fall time to give the communities an idea of what they may be getting, but we always put a disclaimer on there, “subject to Legislative Assembly approval,” so that helps with their planning purposes. Most of the community governments know that they’re getting this allocation, and I don’t believe it’s factored in here at all...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. With devolution came the responsibility for land, so we transferred 19 positions from our lands department over to the new Department of Lands.

Mr. Chair, I believe we have put our money where our mouth is. Again I’ll say we have a duty to consult with the Aboriginal governments. I don’t believe we have duty to consult, but we do consult with everybody that may have some interest. Again, as we go through the business planning process next year, if the Members feel strongly that that needs to be included, then it’s a discussion I think we will have to have at the time, but we do recognize that we do try to consult with all interested stakeholders. If the Member feels that we need to fund them all, then let’s have that discussion during...