This is page numbers 1255 - 1298 of the Hansard for the 14th Assembly, 6th Session. The original version can be accessed on the Legislative Assembly's website or by contacting the Legislative Assembly Library. The word of the day was chairman.

Topics

Bill 32: Supplementary Appropriation Act, No. 2, 2003-2004
Item 19: Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters

Page 1285

Joe Handley

Joe Handley Weledeh

Mr. Chairman, that's correct.

Bill 32: Supplementary Appropriation Act, No. 2, 2003-2004
Item 19: Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters

Page 1285

The Chair

The Chair David Krutko

General comments. Mr. Delorey.

Bill 32: Supplementary Appropriation Act, No. 2, 2003-2004
Item 19: Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters

Page 1285

Paul Delorey

Paul Delorey Hay River North

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just a few comments on this supplementary appropriation. I guess a few concerns that I have about the amount of the supplementary when we consider the overall financial situation that our government is in and how we continue to see more money going into areas that may be questionable as to how really badly in need they are. My first question, I guess, would be to the Minister on one of the major items that he listed in his opening comments, $1.48 million Department of Resources, Wildlife and Economic Development due to a severe fire season.

I wasn't aware that we had such an exceptionally severe fire season this year. I know that we had a few fires around, but I also know that we budget a fair amount of dollars for fire suppression over the years. Have we drained our fire budget so much that we have nothing left in there to fight fires so that now we have to come forward with supplementary appropriation? What has constituted such a severe fire season?

Bill 32: Supplementary Appropriation Act, No. 2, 2003-2004
Item 19: Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters

Page 1285

The Chair

The Chair David Krutko

The Minister responsible for the FMBS, Mr. Handley.

Bill 32: Supplementary Appropriation Act, No. 2, 2003-2004
Item 19: Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters

Page 1285

Joe Handley

Joe Handley Weledeh

Mr. Chairman, this year was a more severe fire season than we've seen for a number of years. This year, the amount spent on fires was almost $28 million compared to $20 million last year and $21 million the year before. So this was a more severe year than we've had. Most of the over-expenditure would have occurred with the late fire that we had in the Norman Wells area. There was a fairly large fire that threatened Norman Wells from the north side and accounted for a lot of the over-expenditure, but this year was exceptional going right back to at least 1999 and possibly several years before that. Thank you.

Bill 32: Supplementary Appropriation Act, No. 2, 2003-2004
Item 19: Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters

Page 1285

The Chair

The Chair David Krutko

Further comments, Mr. Delorey.

Bill 32: Supplementary Appropriation Act, No. 2, 2003-2004
Item 19: Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters

Page 1285

Paul Delorey

Paul Delorey Hay River North

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, on this fire suppression budget, what would our normal costs be if we didn't have a fire at all in the Northwest Territories in the summer? I know that we have some contractual expenditures that we have to have, but if there were no fires at all for a summer what would be the bill to this government?

Bill 32: Supplementary Appropriation Act, No. 2, 2003-2004
Item 19: Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters

Page 1285

The Chair

The Chair David Krutko

Mr. Handley.

Bill 32: Supplementary Appropriation Act, No. 2, 2003-2004
Item 19: Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters

Page 1285

Joe Handley

Joe Handley Weledeh

If we had had no fires in 2003-2004 our costs would have been $18.6 million. Those are pre-suppression contracts that we enter into with ground crews and aircraft contracts and other pre-suppression work we have to do including community protection, purchase of supplies and so on.

Bill 32: Supplementary Appropriation Act, No. 2, 2003-2004
Item 19: Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters

Page 1285

The Chair

The Chair David Krutko

Mr. Delorey.

Bill 32: Supplementary Appropriation Act, No. 2, 2003-2004
Item 19: Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters

Page 1285

Paul Delorey

Paul Delorey Hay River North

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, also another area that was quite evident as we went through this supplementary, the extra expenditures in Health and Social Services, and there will be more questions, I'm sure, as we go through this. Of all the extra expenditures in Health and Social Services it's been extremely hard to find in there any dollars that are actually going to patient care. There is an awful lot of money identified again in here in information technology and this is something that is before us all the time. When we come up and look at different supplementaries, the costs just continue to go up in IT. Could the Minister identify, out of the Health and Social Services supplementary, how much of that money is actually going to patient care?

Bill 32: Supplementary Appropriation Act, No. 2, 2003-2004
Item 19: Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters

Page 1285

The Chair

The Chair David Krutko

Mr. Handley.

Bill 32: Supplementary Appropriation Act, No. 2, 2003-2004
Item 19: Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters

Page 1285

Joe Handley

Joe Handley Weledeh

Mr. Chairman, first of all, with the additional funding for the specialists that's $2.5 million. That we would have to count as being direct patient care. In addition to that there are a number of other expenditures, on telehealth, for example. That would be direct patient care from the telehealth centres, $250,000. A nurse practitioner program, $277,000. Mental health workers, $276,000. The 1-800 call centre for this year, $431,000. In medical equipment, I'm not sure, I'm assuming that's probably a combination of things, but certainly a percentage of it would be for direct patient care, $1.7 million. Then there was another $800,000 that the department identified for each of the health boards and that was cleared specifically for direct patient health care. Mr. Chairman, I haven't totaled that up, but I believe that probably comes to somewhere in the neighbourhood of $5 million out of the request, or more.

Bill 32: Supplementary Appropriation Act, No. 2, 2003-2004
Item 19: Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters

Page 1285

The Chair

The Chair David Krutko

Further comments. Mr. Delorey.

Bill 32: Supplementary Appropriation Act, No. 2, 2003-2004
Item 19: Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters

Page 1285

Paul Delorey

Paul Delorey Hay River North

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. No, I'm going to cut my comments off there. I'll probably have some more questions as we go through the supplementary. Thank you.

Bill 32: Supplementary Appropriation Act, No. 2, 2003-2004
Item 19: Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters

Page 1285

The Chair

The Chair David Krutko

General comments. Mr. Lafferty.

Bill 32: Supplementary Appropriation Act, No. 2, 2003-2004
Item 19: Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters

Page 1285

Leon Lafferty North Slave

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'd just like to ask the Minister what happens to the revenues we collect from sending our firefighters, our water bombers, out to BC, the United States, wherever there's fires? How much do we get in revenues this year from those kinds of fire suppressions?

Bill 32: Supplementary Appropriation Act, No. 2, 2003-2004
Item 19: Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters

Page 1285

The Chair

The Chair David Krutko

Mr. Handley.

Bill 32: Supplementary Appropriation Act, No. 2, 2003-2004
Item 19: Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters

Page 1285

Joe Handley

Joe Handley Weledeh

Mr. Chairman, along with other provinces and territories, we have what's called a MARS agreement, which means that we mutually agree to provide services to each other in the case of extreme fire seasons at cost. So any of the revenues we would get from our crews fighting outside of the Territories would go to cover our actual cost of providing that service. Those funds are accounted for in the forest fire management budget. How much we spent this year, I'm not sure, but Mr. Chairman, I'll refer that to the Minister of RWED. He may have information on what it was that we collected this year. Thank you.

Bill 32: Supplementary Appropriation Act, No. 2, 2003-2004
Item 19: Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters

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The Chair

The Chair David Krutko

The Minister of RWED, Mr. Antoine.

Bill 32: Supplementary Appropriation Act, No. 2, 2003-2004
Item 19: Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters

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Jim Antoine Nahendeh

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We haven't really completely got the complete information yet because of our support that we sent down to BC until very recently. So I don't have the complete figures at this point. Thank you.

Bill 32: Supplementary Appropriation Act, No. 2, 2003-2004
Item 19: Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters

Page 1286

The Chair

The Chair David Krutko

Mr. Lafferty.

Bill 32: Supplementary Appropriation Act, No. 2, 2003-2004
Item 19: Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters

October 7th, 2003

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Leon Lafferty North Slave

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As the reports are not completed, are we expecting any revenues to this government from fire suppression for the summer? Thank you.

Bill 32: Supplementary Appropriation Act, No. 2, 2003-2004
Item 19: Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters

Page 1286

The Chair

The Chair David Krutko

Mr. Handley.

Bill 32: Supplementary Appropriation Act, No. 2, 2003-2004
Item 19: Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters

Page 1286

Joe Handley

Joe Handley Weledeh

Mr. Chairman, we have done an estimate, and I don't know off hand, the Minister of RWED may know, of what amount we would have included in here and netted that off from this request here. There has been an estimate. I don't know what it is that the department expects to get back, but it would have been included in the...I'm sorry, we just found it. It's $2.66 million that we have estimated as what we're getting back and that has been netted off from the $1.8 million that has been requested by the department. That amount is already received. If it's considerably different then there may be some revenue, plus or minus, on that.