Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions are for the Minister of Finance as well. I’d like to start by asking where the funding, I didn’t see any funding identified for the implementation of a new Greenhouse Gas Reduction Strategy which the Minister is committed to complete by this spring and I think is well on the road towards doing that. I’m wondering why we haven’t identified that in our initiatives. That’s obviously going to require some new dollars to achieve, hopefully, some more progressive targets.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. The honourable Minister of Finance, Mr. Miltenberger.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I appreciate the Member’s question and I recognize that this is an issue of great interest and concern to him. He’s an articulate proponent of the need to do this, as he’s indicated in his statement.
We will first complete the work and then see what the work tells us. The government, through practice and hard experience, is very loath to book money on an undetermined figure that is just an estimate. We will have to demonstrate first what we’re going to be moving forward with and then we put a cost on that and then we look at identifying the resources, if it is in fact going to be truly an initiative of this government that we want to see in place during the life of this government. Then we will have to collectively sit down and see what that cost is and where we can possibly identify the money. Possibly from within some slippage within the energy investment section.
I appreciate the comments of the Minister. I assure him that it’s not just a priority of mine. It probably is, and should be, a priority of most people in the Northwest Territories, if you listen to the radio at all and hear what’s happening out there. I’m hoping that this is not a hollow exercise like the Heritage Fund, that we’re going to go to all this work and then not be prepared to fund it. A little bit distressing there.
I’m also wondering about the devolution negotiation funds. Obviously, we’ve signed the AIP and we’re now on the trail towards a final agreement. It’s going to be a costly exercise, especially the way we’ve started here with a lot of catch-up to do. Why wasn’t that funding identified in this budget address?
The Greenhouse Gas Strategy and the Heritage Fund, neither are hollow exercises. There was a lot of work done to get the infrastructure, to get the tool in place, the legislation in place. The Heritage Fund will be there. If the Legislative Assembly chooses to identify money to put into the Heritage Fund, then money will be put into the Heritage Fund.
First we have to get the legislation through. It’s not through yet. It’s going to committee. We’re going to bring it in for first and second reading. It will be approved very late in this Assembly, so we have to get that done. Then it will be the decision of this Legislature.
The same for the Greenhouse Gas Strategy. We have to see what all the consultation and feedback is going to tell us, what we’re going to bring forward as recommendations to get accepted both by this Legislature, by Members, by the government. Then we’ll see how we move forward in a planned, measured way.
The devolution funding that is there is federal money that’s on the table -- $4 million for this government, $3.9 million for the Aboriginal governments -- and that has to be, we have to deal with the federal government for the $4 million. As the Aboriginal governments sign on, they will be dealing with the federal government, as well, on the $3.9 million and how that money will be allocated to those Aboriginal governments.
As I mentioned earlier, we’re skirting dangerously close to our somewhat extraordinary debt limit that we’ve been provided with. Albeit I suppose we could have skirted a little bit closer, even. I appreciate the effort that’s been made to build a small cushion, although $60 million out of $1.34 billion is a pretty modest cushion. I’m wondering what vulnerabilities the Minister sees in the upcoming year that would push us up against, or perhaps even beyond, that debt limit, and any perspective he might provide on making sure that doesn’t happen.
I point out, as well, that we are currently engaged with the federal government on a review of the borrowing limit, not only for the Northwest Territories but the three territories. We anticipate that work will be completed by spring, by April. It is my hope that we will come to a better accommodation than the recognition of and our ability to manage debt. That’s one thing.
What is out there that we don’t control, most immediately of course comes to mind -- something I start worrying about in April -- is fire season and what could possibly happen. British Columbia, I understand, last year had a fire budget of around $50 million to $55 million; their fire season cost them $500 million. It’s a huge issue potentially. The price of oil on the Brent Market is over $100 a barrel. It has huge upward pressure on all governments, on everything we do, on all business. It’s the same as what happened last time when it was at $150 a barrel. It wreaks havoc on budgets for everybody: individuals, governments, and those people trying to get by. Those are two things. There are other things that could happen globally. If you look at the Middle East, if you look at the European Union with all the countries teetering in the balance, if things go south in the States, those could affect us. We have those types of factors that we don’t control that could impact us.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Final supplementary, Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thank you to the Minister for those remarks. Our strategic plan for the 16th Assembly, a couple of the pillars supposedly identified there were a preventative approach and a comprehensive, government-wide, cross-departmental approach to try and get rid of the stovepipes that are out there, so called. How does the Minister see this budget bringing an enhanced focus on a preventative and cross-departmental or government-wide approach on some of the big issues in a way that we haven’t seen to date despite our plan?
The focus of this budget, as I indicated very clearly being the last one of the 16th Assembly, is one that we want to consolidate, one that we want to try to get as many things completed or firmly on the rails as we can during the life of this Assembly. We are continuing the work of the Strategic Initiatives committees. One of the intents was the very thing the Members talked about, was to write down the stovepipes, to get people in the room, senior government officials into areas outside their direct departmental responsibilities, not only to deal with the relatively small amounts of money that were there but to in fact come up with a way to develop, a way to engage in a policy level on a broader thinking, big picture approach, and how do we put the creativity that the Member for Great Slave talked about of employees to work in areas that they might not normally be applying themselves. That is going to continue. I believe we’ve made some very fundamental steps just by our commitment in this government, to water, to a land use framework, to the Wildlife Act, to the money we’re spending on energy and the fact that we want to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions and our carbon footprint and at the same time reduce costs and become more efficient and reduce our reliance on diesel.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. The honourable Member for Frame Lake, Ms. Bisaro.
