Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Mr. Miltenberger.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We appreciate the Member’s encouragement when it comes to infrastructure dollars. Some of that discussion was touched on in the House yesterday with the Premier. We as well raise it at every opportunity. I know I’ve raised it with every Minister on Cabinet when they’re talking to Minister Baird or any of the federal Ministers raises the issue. Taltson is there as one of the pressing ones we’d like to see get done and that we think might qualify for either the Green Fund or P3. We also want to have further discussions about other alternative ways to help fund that project. The

discussions on how we proceed with the Mackenzie Highway, those are all things that are on everybody’s to-do list.

In terms of the general accessing of infrastructure dollars, I would like to point out, as well, to our credit, the feedback that we’ve gotten from the federal government is that we’re one of the most organized jurisdictions when it comes to taking full advantage, having the matching dollars, having the projects, having the planning done in accessing and making this infrastructure program work as well as it has.

Just a couple other comments, if I could. I’m glad to hear what the Minister had to say. That’s good news and I look forward to their continued concerted effort with the federal government on securing infrastructure dollars for the Territory.

The other thing I just wanted to mention while I have the floor is there are some things, from my perspective, that aren’t included in the plan. I think those are vitally important too. That’s why I was asking questions about it yesterday, about how do we get more money. I think we really need to focus in on things that aren’t in here that we need to address, such as the extension of the Ingraham Trail in Yellowknife specifically. This is a riding that I represent. Sisson’s School isn’t in here. The Master Development Plan for Stanton Territorial Hospital isn’t in here. Things like that need to be addressed. If we have technical reports going back five years that suggest that if we want to extend the life of that hospital, we’d better get on some of these building upgrades and we haven’t done that and it’s not in the capital plan, then we’re going to have some problems going forward. I think there are so many demands out there across the Territory that we need as much money as we can possibly get so that we can address all of these concerns. That’s where I’m coming at with this.

The Minister and other Ministers will hear me talk about things that aren’t in here as we go through the capital plan as well, because I think with two years left I certainly would like to see those projects that I mentioned. There’s others as well that I’d like to see in the capital plan as we move forward.

More money would always be put to use. We all know we have far more needs than we have resources. The capital plan is before us. We’ll have one more cycle to go where we can look at what’s possible in the 18 months of decision-making time or so that we have left. I agree with the Member; the more money that we can find, cost shared or not, the more projects we’ll be able to do for the people of the North.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Next on my list, Mr. Beaulieu.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Some of the information that I was interested in seeking is as well being covered by other MLAs today. I guess specific questions on the Building Canada Plan money. I’m curious if this government actually has a strategy to approach the government as opposed to maybe bringing it up with federal Ministers or discussing these things when opportunities arise. An actual plan on how they intend to bring more money or how to utilize and another strategy on how to utilize the money that’s actually in place now. I guess I’ll start with that, then I’d like to talk about some of the stuff that’s not in the plan for now. If there’s a strategy in place to engage the federal government, number one, and if there’s better strategy in place for capital carry-overs and utilization of the money that’s not being used are my first two questions.

Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Mr. Miltenberger.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Yes, there is a strategy. There has been a strategy. There has been an enormous amount of work done over the last couple years as we started moving into the recession, as the decisions were made to try to compress the Building Canada Fund and look at adding more money for housing. It required a lot of work, how the process was going to work nationally, how we were going to get organized identifying our own share of the money. We’ve done it for the current year. The year that’s now before us is the second year of that program. There’s going to be work continuing on, working with the federal government on a number of other fronts when it comes to the health funding and further assistance on some of the major projects that have been discussed around this table.

I make the point that carry-overs mean the project is still on the books, it’s just that it didn’t get built. It’s not money that now can be pulled away and identified. The challenge, as we’ve indicated, is to make sure that we try to conclude as many projects as is humanly possible in the year that the money is voted. That’s an issue I know we share in common with the Members.

I am not sure really that I heard the key words as to what the strategy with the federal government is, but I’ll let that go.

My issue with the capital carry-overs is basically that money is not being used from year to year. Although they’re committed and on the books, it isn’t being used. My assumption is, then, that half of that is borrowed money that’s not real debt, because the money is not actually being spent. I just have some sort of issue with half the money comes from surplus and half the money comes from the debt wall, but the money is not being spent so it’s in fact not a real debt. My solution for that, I

believe, is to reduce all capital projects that are not being done -- they’re being carried over by 10 percent -- and reuse that money for projects that are ready to go.

With that, I’d like to ask the government if this government has an actual strategy on how they approach barge communities or winter road communities. The timing on the delivery of those materials is very essential and it feels like to me, in the one barge community that I have of Lutselk’e, that the barge came and went and a bunch of things that I’ve been asking for, people that have wanted work done on houses and so on, nothing happened, no materials arrived. Those people are told, by virtue of not having any materials arrive in the community, that nothing will happen this year. I’d like to know if this government has an actual strategy that works on communities that are using barges and communities that are using winter roads. But winter roads are not really my issue. I’m more concerned about barging communities.

Over the decades there’s been practice and policy and tradition, I suppose, on how we’ve come to source communities that are on a barge system or winter road. The planning is all done around the seasons. What time the windows are going to be available, ordering time, be it fuel, be it the dry goods, be it building materials, and we have that approach in all the communities that are off-road. We’re struggling first with things that we don’t control, like weather, some shipping delays that may occur, there’s other issues happening outside our jurisdiction be it strikes or other things that could impact us, but the intent is to plan for those, which is one of the benefits of this new process. It gives us more lead time to get ready for the upcoming spring. So there is -- and if you want to look at any area -- all those approaches that have been developed over the years. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Mr. Beaulieu.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It doesn’t seem to be working, the system. That’s exactly what I thought, too, with the movement in the capital. I thought things would actually arrive in time. I’ve actually witnessed a project in another region where it was delayed almost two years because the government couldn’t get the winter road thing organized and couldn’t get the materials into that community. We skidooed into that community one year and this project was already a year behind and it ended up...I think that place actually got opened this year, and we’re two years into this term and that thing started before I was an MLA. So I think that the government actually can’t just say they have a strategy on how they’re going to do winter road and barging, they actually have to have one, and I don’t think they do.

Things that are clearly missing from Tu Nedhe that I’ve been asking about and that don’t appear in the capital plan, as I see it, is a little bit of work on the great elders facility in Fort Resolution where the people want to keep elders in the community, especially elders that are passing away and they’re being shipped out of the community and they’re being held in other facilities in their last days. One of the things I asked for, they said well there’s no nursing available to do that. That’s a separate topic. The other topic was that it would be very expensive to get the building ready, which I don’t agree with, but at the same time there’s no plan whatsoever to do anything in that building.

I think that there’s enough being said here about the youth and how if we’re going to cure the social ills of our society up here, we need to start by making sure that we have productive youth. I don’t think there’s enough attention paid to that at this point. I’m not talking about doubling programs or putting more money into programs, I’m talking about putting capital into the communities to build centres for the youth, somewhere for the youth to go, something for the youth to do. I’d like to see some sort of things in the capital plan for all the communities that don’t have youth centres. You know, put youth centres in and address the issue.

I think that right now what’s happening in these communities is we’re not producing productive kids and not a high enough percentage of productive citizens, because we’re not addressing issues of the youth in the community because we’re not paying attention to them. I mean, that is an issue. I really don’t know how else to make this government understand that if we address the issue and we help the youth, then at the end of the day we’re going to have huge savings in this government. Even the social envelope will shrink, there’s no question about, it if we start producing citizens out of the community that are productive. I believe that that has long-term benefits by putting a little bit of money in here instead of putting it elsewhere. I mean, the government seems more concerned about making sure that the computers are properly housed in Yellowknife than they are concerned about housing youth in the small communities. I’ve, unfortunately, run out of time here, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Minister Miltenberger.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I’d be happy to donate some of my response time to allow the Member to finish his comments if he’d like.

Thank you, Minister Miltenberger. I have nobody else on my list. Are there any more general comments on opening remarks? Mr. Beaulieu.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I seem to be getting really frustrated with talking about stuff

that I think that the communities need and then, as MLAs, we seem to, I feel that as MLAs, as the Ministers are also MLAs too, know what’s needed in their communities and that’s what we want this government to pay attention to: what’s needed in the communities.

We’re hearing directly from our communities. I mean, it’s frustrating, because I have so many housing issues and I want the government to start repairing houses instead of building houses. People think I work for the Housing Corporation. I used to work for the Housing Corporation for a long time, but people still think I do. I’m an MLA, but basically I’m like a program officer for the Housing Corporation and I need the government to respond. This government has to respond to this. I mean, it’s frustrating as hell when you’re trying to do work for the people and you have to visit the same individual several times and to explain to them that nothing has happened, not because I haven’t taken the issue up with this government but because the government has not responded, and it’s very frustrating.

I have probably the most important project right now in both communities is some sort of dust control and I recognize that that’s a community issue, but the community doesn’t seem to be 100 percent engaged in the issue. I’m not sure if they’re not fully aware that they have the control of their funding yet or anything. Bottom line is, I’m saying, MACA, go into those communities, sit down with those guys, finance, do a finance thing with them and get the roads done. That’s an important issue.

A very important issue in Lutselk’e is a road to Austin Lake. To them that is what they really need. That opens up a whole gamut of things for them, positive things, tourism. There are all kinds of positive implications, but this government doesn’t have a program. I mean, we can build roads, but there’s no program to build a road that’s not connected to other roads. I’m not quite understanding how that works. I mean, there’s 20 kilometres of road that people can drive on all year long. I’m assuming that when they build a mini-hydro in Snowdrift River that there will be a road built to that. So the rest of it would be 20 more kilometres and, I mean, the benefits are tremendous. We know, the community knows, that those benefits are there. That’s not in the plan. We have to get things in the plan that the communities want. Somehow we’re going to have to make a connection with the communities. I don’t think we’re making a connection with the communities. We have a huge budget that’s, like, $300 million, but from my perspective, from Tu Nedhe people, they’re not getting a positive impact out of that.

In all fairness, yes, there are some things that are being done that are positive, and I don’t want to be unfair. That’s true; there’s been some positive stuff

that’s been done. A youth centre will be built in Fort Res and the highway is getting chipsealed. I mean, those are positive things, but we have two communities here, and people seem to really concentrate on their own personal issues. Housing is a very personal issue. The fact of the condition of their community is a very personal issue and those are the things that this government hasn’t responded to. I’m done. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. More of a comment. Does the Minister want to respond?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. If the Member is frustrated after two years, wait until he’s been here 14.

---Laughter

Sometimes the wheels of government grind slow and fine, and one of the top criteria for a good MLA is persistence and I suppose an unrelenting focus on pushing the issues, no matter how slow it sometimes gets.

I appreciate some of the concerns the Member has raised. There are things that I believe are already underway in terms of with the Minister of Housing on some of the alternatives that are there in terms of addressing some of these irritants. Some of them are structural, some of them process, some of them are policy issues that can be done that I think we can do in the very near future.

The issue of roads is an important one. I would point out, though, that one of the things that’s not in this capital plan, of course, is the mini-hydro in Lutselk’e, which will form a critical mass and will allow other things to happen, as the Member has indicated. But if we get that multi-million dollar project going, we drop the costs. The construction of that particular facility will then make it easier for other things to happen. Over two years there are a lot of pieces coming into place that the Member has had his hands on. So once again the issue is we have far more needs than we have resources, and that’s the challenge every time we gather around the table. Thank you.

Thank you, Minister Miltenberger. Next on my list, Mr. Menicoche.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. With respect to the honourable Minister’s opening remarks, I’m in general agreement, because we all worked together towards the capital budget that’s before us at Cabinet and the committees, and we reviewed what’s before us and tried to fit in our priorities and try to use the best leverage we can of our budget and some of the stimulus dollars that are out there.

I do have to share my concern with Mr. Ramsay. Did we capitalize as much of the federal stimulus dollars that are out there that we could have? I

don’t know. We got some of it, but I’m not entirely convinced that our government worked as hard as they could in lobbying Ottawa. There are many other pots of funds out there. There was assignment funds, there was the community adjustment funds. I don’t know if we took the opportunity to leverage those funds.

In terms of our highway infrastructure too, I think we’ve told ourselves, as a Caucus, that if there’s anything this 16th Legislature is going to leave

behind as a legacy project, it would be to improve our roads, and our capital budget does speak to that. We’ve got a significant amount of money earmarked for improving our roads. My vision is to see the chipsealing of the Deh Cho Trail as one, and chipsealing as many of our other highways in our other regions as well. We can leave that behind, that’s something significant that our constituents see and the people of the Northwest Territories can see. So I’d like to work towards that in the years to come.

The opening remarks also speak about having the ability to bid out or tender our projects earlier. Because just during my recent constituency tour, that continues to be a frustration. We’ve had projects awarded by September, that’s like rainy season. In fact, I went to Nahanni Butte and Granny from Nahanni tells me, she says, look, July and August was perfect building weather for the access road and when they start working, it starts raining and now we have to wait another year to complete our access road. That’s the kind of frustration people are feeling. They don’t understand. It’s the same with the construction of our housing. They’re saying, well, look at them, they’re starting to build our houses now, must be September, right? So that kind of stuff.

I see that we’re going to have the ability to hopefully get out of the gate early come the new construction season. In fact, I’m going to have several Member’s statements to that effect in the next couple weeks, because I’ve got priority projects that have been delayed a year. As Mr. Beaulieu had indicated, in some places it has been two years. I certainly would like to see us getting out of the gate earlier, use the months of June, July and August to complete these projects and give us lots of room to meet the challenges of such a huge capital budget.

I see, as well, that in the next couple of years, we are going to be completing a few of our large projects like the $100 million school in Inuvik, big schools in Tulita, Good Hope, et cetera. I am glad that their needs are being met, but now we have this time to turn our attention to our smaller communities. They have educational or school replacement needs as well, as well as improvement of our health centres and facilities. I believe we have to start leaning towards that. We are taking care of our larger communities. Now we should,

and we must, start taking care of our infrastructure in our smaller communities.

If anything, Mr. Chairman, I am in general agreement of our plan here. There is always more that could be done. I will certainly point that out as we review each department. I think the single most important thing is that we stick to our plan, we get our construction projects, our capital projects out of the gate early in the new year and show our constituencies and our communities that we are trying to be as efficient and effective as possible and build during a reasonable time and build on a reasonable time. With that, thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. It is more of a comment, but I will go to the Minister for a response.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Every infrastructure dollar that we have been eligible for, we have matched or we have helped the communities match the money to get the projects out of the door. There are a number of funds that are application-based -- the Green Fund, the P3 projects fund -- that we have put application in. On those we have to wait and see, but we have left literally no stone unturned. When we find out, for example, that we get a contact from Ottawa that there is another $300,000 or $600,000 available, we start looking right away to see how we can access that money, how do we find out our cost-shared dollars.

I appreciate the concern of the Member, of course. As we move forward with our planning and how we control our costs as a government, not just capital but all our other costs and still provide that supporting role as we work through the recession, capital is going to play a key role in that. As we have our discussions on the budget, that will be fleshed out in more detail with committee. Thank you.

Thank you, Minister Miltenberger. Next on my list is Mrs. Groenewegen.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I, like others, am happy to see the kind of money that we are expending on capital in this year’s budget. I was listening to my colleague Mr. Beaulieu express his concern about the seeming disconnect between the wishes, desires or aspirations of the people at the community and what our government is able to deliver. I don’t know how we address that, but it reminded me of the days when a Commissioner like Stuart Hodgson would fly around in an airplane and go community to community with one staff person and talk to the community leaders, write a cheque and fly away. I tell you, there was something to be said for that kind of directness that did exist previously.

Now we have, of course, a huge bureaucratic process that goes behind our capital planning process and it does seem frustrating. It doesn’t seem like it is a lack of resources that is the holdback, but it does seem like things have to go through such a rigorous screening. By the time the stuff gets delivered, it costs so much money.

I had expressed this before and I will say it again: I am all for good quality capital infrastructure. I don’t think we should build stuff that is second rate, but I also don’t think we should build stuff thinking it is only going to last for 40 years. Midterm retrofit and refurbishing most of our capital buildings is every 20 years. I don’t know what it would cost to build stuff that would last longer, but I am not really sure why that is.

I am also always very concerned about the amount of what we call soft costs that go into these projects; the architectural, the engineering and for things that you wouldn’t really think you need a lot of that kind of creative approach brought to them. I have used this as an example before, but I will say it again: if you are building fire halls in communities, I don’t think we need to design a new template for every single one. Where there is opportunity for a cookie cutter application of capital, then let’s do that. Certainly on other things like schools and hospitals and other more high-end kind of expense of capital infrastructure, there is a need to do a lot of consultation and assess the needs of the community and put more care into the planning.

You look at the Master Development Plan for Stanton or you look at the Master Development Plan for Hay River for the replacement of the hospital, it does seem like there is an extraordinary amount of money that is spent in the planning process. It is millions per capital project, truth be known. I guess it is something I don’t quite fully understand and don’t fully support, with all due respect to all those architects and engineers out there.

I also think that, when looking at capital in general, I have mentioned the life expectancy, we should have an eye on that and, of course, on the operating costs. I may be repeating what somebody else has already said here, but when we are building new infrastructure, we have an opportunity to really think seriously about how that construction will reflect on the cost of operating that facility for years to come, because I think sometimes the cost of operating accumulatively overtakes the cost of putting it on the ground in the first place. There are certainly lots of technology and ideas out there of doing that more efficiently. I think that this will be a boost to the economy.

I hope the capacity is there for Northerners to take advantage of most of these capital dollars. The competitive process will ensure the government’s interests are protected, but if we can make sure

with as much as within our capacity to ensure that the Northerners benefit from these capital dollars, of course that makes it even more beneficial. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.