Thank you, Mr. Minister. Mr. Krutko.

Does the Minister have any idea of how many special warrants, dollars not previously authorized, have been passed through supplementaries for the community of Tuktoyaktuk?

Thank you. Minister Handley.

Madam Chair, as I said, I don't have that information with me. If Mr. Krutko gave me a time frame and said how much has been spent through supps or special warrants over the last three years or five years, I will get the information for him. I just don't have that with me today.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Mr. Krutko.

Does the Minister have any idea of what has been spent in the last year? You don't have to go back three years. Just use one year as an example? There was a special warrant that came forward just a couple of months ago.

Thank you, Mr. Krutko. Minister Handley.

Madam Chair, to my recollection, there was $1.3 million that was allocated for the road project through a special project earlier this fiscal year and then this amount of money for $378,000. I don't recall any other ones.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Mr. Krutko.

Can the Minister tell me why it is that the dollars that are set forth during the capital planning process... the argument was they needed a supplementary for a road repair because it's a service road, it goes out to the sewage lagoon or the garbage dump and that's why they needed $800,000. Again, that could have been done through a main estimate process. Now we see here again $378,000 that is coming through that wasn't previously authorized. You are saying the money was already there. If the Minister can get the information... The way these special warrants are being abused. That's what it is, abuse. We have a system in place through the capital planning process that's there for a particular reason. This is an emergency. You can understand it when human life is being threatened, but at this point I don't believe it is. Under what criteria of the Financial Administration Act was this project managed to be classified under and put into the budget as not previously authorized?

Thank you. Minister Handley.

Madam Chair, there is always opportunity for every community, not selected communities, to access money either through the supp or special warrant process if it is deemed that there is an emergency or an urgency or it's in the public interest to spend the money for that reason. I don't want to get into the road, we already went through that one, but in that case it was a situation where we would have lost the whole road bed. That was the advice brought to us by experts. In this case, it is our view that it is better to spend the money that we have here now rather than doing it at $100,000 a year through a special operating fund in order to move ahead with the protection of the shoreline. Those are decisions we have to make. Some Members may disagree and feel that it isn't as urgent as we feel it is. We will present our best case here and that is the correct process for it. I want to emphasize, Madam Chair, this is available to every community. If there is an urgency or public interest, then the case should be brought to the attention of our government, to FMB in particular and we will assess it. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Mr. Krutko.

Madam Chair, on one hand he is saying it came through supp because it was an emergency. Then we heard from the Minister saying the money came from another pot of money that was put aside for a solid waste dump which was in the capital allocation and they agreed to redistribute it. Under the existing program criteria, there is also $100,000 each community gets within their budget. Why didn't they use that $100,000 and then come forward with additional money knowing they had made an investment in this project?

Thank you. Minister Handley.

Madam Chair, I am not really familiar with the detail of the $100,000 the Member is referring to, so I will refer it to Mr. Steen.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Minister Steen.

Thank you, Madam Chair. The community has already issued tenders for the $100,000 for rock haul from Inuvik. So they are using their $100,000 that they were given specifically for the purpose they were given it for.

Thank you. Mr. Krutko.

There are millions of dollars that's gone into this one particular community in extraordinary funding, supplementary appropriations, special warrants. Everybody can say it's an emergency, but in every community we talk about fairness, and that we have a capital planning process in place, and that you have to follow the allocation of how the funding is going to be given. Yet, in this case, there is always rerouting or new processes invented of finding ways of getting money into this particular community. I know it's an election year, but I think that it's pretty blatant that this is being abused. Realistically, knowing there are other funding sources out there, why was this money brought forward this way knowing they could have had access to other processes. There's an extraordinary funding pot in MACA for that type of purpose. Why didn't they apply through that process? There is a pot of money in MACA for that. Why didn't they go through that route?

Thank you. I believe the question is directed to the Minister of Finance, Mr. Handley.

Madam Chair, the decision was that it was better to do more work upfront than to do it with smaller amounts of money over a four-year period. So when this situation was brought to the attention of FMB, it was decided that because there had been the $378,000 identified for the solid waste site, it would be better to take that money rather than putting it back into general revenue, use it for this other purpose that had come to our attention as an emergency. The process that was followed is well within our guidelines and our policies and the way we deal with any of these kinds of urgent situations. Could we have taken money from somewhere else? Possibly, I don't know. We could have taken money out of a project in some other community and used it there instead, but it doesn't really gain anything. We are still using GNWT money. I am not sure of the intention behind the Member's suggestion that we take it from another pot. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. At this time, the chair recognizes the Member for North Slave, Mr. Lafferty.