Wendy Bisaro

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I move that consideration of Tabled Document 155-17(5), Supplementary Estimates (Operations Expenditures), No. 2, 2014-2015, be now concluded and that Tabled Document 155-17(5) be reported and recommended as ready for further consideration in formal session through the form of an appropriation bill. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are addressed to the Minister of Industry, Tourism and Investment. With devolution came new responsibilities, and one of those new responsibilities was for oil and gas. We’ve been talking a lot about it in the last little while and I’d like to ask some questions of the Minister of ITI around his job as the regulator.

We’ve inherited that job from the federal government with devolution. I’ve found when dealing with the environmental assessment at Giant Mine, which the Minister responsible was the Minister of ENR, that they had set up a system within...

Thanks for the explanation, but I’m sorry, that’s not good enough. We have a policy which says that if money has not been appropriated, we can’t spend it. The government had to go and approve two special warrants in order to get the funding to fight the fires this summer and special warrants have very specific criteria, but they had to do a special warrant because we had no legislative sitting where we could approve the funding for fire suppression. Yet in this case, albeit it’s a relatively small amount of money, we have said oh, that’s fine, go ahead, do the renovations to Junior...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Three times in the 16th Assembly I spoke in this House for the need for the NWT to have an impartial arbiter, an ombudsman, to assist our residents with a dispute or a disagreement so they can avoid having to go to court to settle it.

The NWT is one of only three jurisdictions in Canada without one. This year, after much work by committee and staff, the Standing Committee on Government Operations on June 5th released a report which outlines the pros and cons of establishing an ombudsman office in the NWT. Such an office would act as an independent, impartial office with...

Thanks, Mr. Chair. I wanted to ask a question with regards to the funding for start-up costs for implementation of Junior Kindergarten, $375,000. I know that JK was a little bit delayed in terms of getting going in some places, and I know that some of the necessary construction projects to get JK where it needed to be were a little bit behind. I would like to know from the Minister whether these construction projects – I think they were about $30,000 each maybe, give or take – have been completed. Thank you.

Mr. Chair, to our cash position, where does this borrowing cost of $12,000 to $15,000 put us in terms of our Borrowing Authorization Act and our limit there? Thank you.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. I appreciate the explanation, but it doesn’t give me much comfort. I’m being asked to approve more money than what’s actually required in this budget year. We’re committing to do that, to ask for some money for a certain program or service and ask for more money than was required in a budget year. I think the Minister responsible or Cabinet would laugh us out of the room.

I appreciate this is a bit of a different situation, but it seems to go to a number of decisions that have been taken over the last six months to a year that pretty much tell me that I don’t have much of a...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Even though I have 45 seconds, I’m done. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have a few comments and then I’ll have some questions when we get to detail as well.

My concerns are very similar to those of my colleagues. We have two very large expenditures in this operations supp. Both of them were unexpected and were unplanned, and that happens, particularly with the forest fire expenditures, fire suppression expenditures, the special warrants that had to come through. Absolutely, that needed to be done and I’m glad that the government acted on those.

I do have very large concerns with advancing the payments on the Inuvik-Tuk highway, the $20...

Thanks Mr. Speaker. I didn’t really hear an answer there so I’ll just give up on that one as well.

This is a new process, as the Minister has said, and any time there’s a new process I am a firm believer in doing an evaluation of it. So, I’d like to know if the Minister has plans at this point, even though it’s early in the process, does he have plans to do an evaluation of how our role as regulator and our role as accepting input on issues is working, and when does he expect that that evaluation would occur? Thank you.