Thank you, Minister Miltenberger. Mr. Bromley, your time has expired. Committee, we’re on 5-25. Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. To complete this loop here – and I appreciate the Minister’s comments there – I do note in his opening comments that we are reducing our total contributions to subsidizing these electricity rates by over $6 million this year, but I also observed that none of that reduction is being transferred into actually addressing the cost of power and reducing that through energy initiatives that would help in that way. Would the Minister consider supporting more efforts such as was done in the 16th Assembly? Each year we are dropping now our power subsidy rates somewhat, a significant amount in terms of millions of dollars, and we are not increasing our expenditures on energy expenditures. Would the Minister agree that we should be putting some of these reductions from subsidy that we’re enjoying into actually addressing the costs of power in a real fundamental way?
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Minister Miltenberger.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would agree that we want to, in the coming year, as we look at increasing the amount of money we’re going to put into infrastructure, have a serious discussion how much of that money, that extra $50 million a year goes into energy infrastructure. We will be coming forward, as I have indicated a number of times now and the Premier has also made reference. We are going to come forward with a number of major initiatives, one tied to hydro in the North and South Slave focusing mainly initially on transmission and then we are, as well, going to lay out what we think is a very positive plan as it pertains to liquid natural gas and how we think that will lower energy costs. At the same time, we are going to continue to work on efficiencies, conservation and the rebate. We are going to continue to put more money into all those rebate programs that will assist people in terms of switching to more energy-efficient alternative energy type of units. Thank you.
Mr. Chair, I appreciate those comments. I know the Minister has concerns in this area and we’ll be going after things. He listed quite a number of initiatives that we hope to do. All of them have costs to them. I guess I’m disappointed that here we have $6 million that we are reducing in subsidies and no attempt to increase our efforts in the direction that the Minister has indicated. I will leave it at that, Mr. Chair. That’s all I had on this page. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Committee, we are on 5-25, Finance, activity summary, office of the comptroller general, operations expenditure summary, $22.377 million. Does committee agree?
Agreed.
Thank you. Page 5-26, Finance, activity summary, office of the comptroller general, grants and contributions, contributions, $11.085 million. Does committee agree?
Agreed.
Thank you. Page 5-27, Finance, information item, office of the comptroller general, active positions. Are there any questions?
Agreed.
Thank you. Page 5-29, Finance, activity summary, office of the chief information officer, operations expenditure summary, $2.469 million.
Agreed.
Thank you. Page 5-30, Finance, information item, office of the chief information officer, grants and contributions, contributions, $100,000. Does committee agree?
Agreed.
Thank you. Page 5-31, Finance, information item, office of the chief information officer, active positions. Any questions?
Agreed.
Thank you. Page 5-33, Finance, information item, Liquor Revolving Fund. Mr. Yakeleya.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have a couple of questions here in regard to the Liquor Revolving Fund. Can the Minister indicate to me from 2011-12 what was the number of sales in the Norman Wells liquor store?
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. Just give them a second to look for that information. We’ll go to Minister Miltenberger.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We don’t have that level of detail in terms of community consumption of alcohol, but we can commit to get that information for committee. Thank you.
Mr. Chair, I look forward to the information from the Minister. In 2011-12 the Territorial Liquor Commission had sales about $46.3 million. Gross sales increased over the previous year by 1.6 percent. In regard to the Liquor Commission, there are goals and objectives. One of them is to educate people on responsible alcohol use and not abusing it. Can the Minister briefly tell me what type of promotional programs they have out there to support their goals and initiatives under this Liquor Commission?
Mr. Chair, firstly, we work with the Government of the Northwest Territories where we have a huge interest in alcohol education, through Health, through Active Living, through all of those other programs. As a commission, we label all of the bottles. We have the bags that are marked. We do posters. We do ads about responsible drinking, as well, as I indicated, to try to make sure that what we are doing is supportive and ties into the work that has been done by government departments such as Health and Social Services and Education. Trying to really push, for example, not having pregnant mothers drink is one really key area. We make efforts in all of those areas to try to educate people to make the right choices. Thank you.
Mr. Chair, certainly I encourage the Minister to continue providing other effective means of educating the young people.
If you look at the RCMP stats in the Sahtu, the increase of liquor has shot up quite considerably. It’s scary. If you look at the amount of liquor that is being sold in the Northwest Territories combined that with the stats of the RCMP with people who are getting into trouble because of alcohol, those numbers are high. If you look at even the jail, $37 million to house correctional facility inmates in our jail here, and the amount that the Northwest Territories liquor sales have caused a lot of headaches for a lot of people.
I agree with the Minister when it comes down to it, it is a personal choice and personal responsibility. Sometimes with the alcohol, it adds some other chemicals in there that really fights the person and the heart and gets them addicted. That has happened to the best of us.
I want to work with the Minister within the life of this government to have some other options. How do we educate the people? More and more young people are using alcohol. If they can use it in a responsible manner, great, but I believe that education is the key for handling this issue here.
I want to ask the Minister if this education promotion is done by the NWT Liquor Commission, is it going to reconsider how we promote, other than labels on the bottles and bags and posters and ads. Is there something else that we could look at that would see that we have something to measure? Do you have a measurement of results? Maybe we can look at some of the numbers that we are having here, certainly the Norman Wells liquor store due to the unrestricted sales that certainly shot up from previous years. This is what I want to look at.
I heard him once say, on one hand we buy the liquor and on the other hand we do the treatment. We do both. I am looking to see how we can help our people. I believe in our goals for healthy, independent, strong people. This is one issue here with our hand in the bottle that is also killing a lot of our people. It’s a tough commission, I guess, and how do we do that? Where is the balance? Thank you.
Mr. Chair, the Member and I have had numerous discussions about the ravages of alcohol and its destructive force across the entire fabric of the Northwest Territories and how he and I, growing old together, still talk about how do we bend the curve on this in a positive way.
Thank you. I’m going to have to disagree with the Minister there. I’m not growing old. We have matured together. We have worked together on this issue, and we’ve had discussions. This is one of the most complex and serious issues that we’ve talked about. I’m really encouraged by the Minister to say that there’s a possibility of looking at some things like how do we work together.
Liquor is provided in the Northwest Territories. That’s one of the things that we do as a government or any government across Canada. On the other hand, it has such a destructive force that I keep bringing it up to the Minister, and we’ll continue to talk until we get really old, old together, and see how we deal with this issue.
I know the government is working hard on it through other initiatives, and I really want to have some good discussion on this issue here. If we can solve and resolve this issue, look out world: the Northwest Territories is going to take off because we’ve got some really good people that just happen to have this demon, as some people call it, hanging on to them, and that’s pretty bad.
So I’m going to leave it at that. I look forward to working with the Minister on this. And again, how do we start promoting other promotional campaign ads that tell the people if you’re going to take this, it can be pretty dangerous? If you do it responsibly and mature, then it’s okay, and that’s what we’ve got to learn.
So I’m going to leave it at that. That’s all I have to say, just mostly comments.
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. Committee, we’re on 5-33, Finance, information item, Liquor Revolving Fund. Any questions.
Agreed.
Thank you. Committee, 5-34, Finance, information item, Liquor Revolving Fund, active positions. Any questions?
Agreed.
Seeing none. Page 5-35, Finance, information item, work performed on behalf of others.
Agreed.
Committee, if you’d be kind enough to turn to 5-7, department summary, Finance, operations expenditure summary, $156.278 million. Does committee agree?
Agreed.
Thank you, committee. Does committee agree that consideration of the Department of Finance is completed?
Agreed.
Thank you, committee. I’d like to thank Mr. Kalgutkar, Mr. Aumond and Minister Miltenberger for this evening. Sergeant-at-Arms, if you could please escort our witnesses out of the Chamber. Thank you. Mr. Menicoche.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I move that we report progress.
---Carried
Good evening, colleagues. Can I have the report of Committee of the Whole, Mr. Dolynny.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Your committee has been considering Tabled Document 9-17(4), NWT Main Estimates, 2013-2014, and would like to report progress. Mr. Speaker, I move that the report of Committee of the Whole be concurred with.
Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. A motion is on the floor. Do we have a seconder? The seconder is Ms. Bisaro.
---Carried
Orders of the day for Friday, March 8, 2013, 10:00 a.m.:
Prayer
Ministers’ Statements
Members’ Statements
Returns to Oral Questions
Recognition of Visitors in the Gallery
Acknowledgements
Oral Questions
Written Questions
Returns to Written Questions
Replies to Opening Address
Petitions
Reports of Standing and Special Committees
Reports of Committees on the Review of Bills
Tabling of Documents
Notices of Motion
Notices of Motion for First Reading of Bills
Motions
Motion 17-17(4), Appointment of Acting Clerk of the Legislative Assembly
First Reading of Bills
Second Reading of Bills
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Madam Clerk has the floor!
Tabled Document 9-17(4), NWT Main Estimates, 2013-2014
Bill 1, Tlicho Statutes Amendment Act
Report of Committee of the Whole
Third Reading of Bills
Orders of the Day
Thank you, Mr. Clerk. Accordingly, this House stands adjourned until Friday, March 8th, at 10:00 a.m.
---ADJOURNMENT
The House adjourned at 8:13 p.m.
