Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, it’s great that this government’s looking at that, they’re going to try to find nurses for Wrigley and Tsiigehtchic. The question is we can’t afford to be looking, we have to have people on the ground, especially during this critical time, especially during freeze-up. So again, I would like to ask the Minister, can I get assurance for the people of Tsiigehtchic that the nurse will be there not just during freeze-up but there permanently going forward in light of the situation we find ourselves in with H1N1? Thank you.

I will get back to the Member before the end of the day as to why they do not have a nurse there during the freeze-up. I was not aware of that, Mr. Speaker.

With respect to enhancing the nursing staff in Wrigley and McPherson, it’s something the Member and Members from both Mackenzie Delta and Nahendeh are aware of and something that we could make more public and concrete as we go through the next budget cycle. But I believe the answers will be something that the public would like. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Lee. The time for question period has expired. The honourable Member for Hay River South, Mrs. Groenewegen.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to seek unanimous consent to return to recognition of visitors in the gallery.

---Unanimous consent granted.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It’s my pleasure today to recognize in the visitor’s gallery my husband, Rick Groenewegen, who does have a 47-foot fishing boat. Get it ready, honey, we’re going fishing. And my daughter, Jillian, who is currently unemployed and looking for work, if anybody has any ideas for her. Thank you.

Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. Item 8, written questions. The honourable Member for Sahtu, Mr. Yakeleya.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions are for the Minister of Health and Social Services.

1. Can the Minister outline a referral process for

clients that want to attend alcohol and drug treatment programs on the land?

2. Can the Minister outline the steps that are

required to establish an on-the-land program for alcohol and drug treatment programs in the Sahtu region?

3. Will the Minister provide the amount of funding

that the federal government allocates to aboriginal alcohol and drug treatment programs in the NWT?

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. Item 9, returns to written questions. Item 10, replies to opening address. Item 11, petitions. Item 12, reports of standing and special committees. Item 13, reports of committees on the review of bills. Item 14, tabling of documents. The honourable Member for Weledeh, Mr. Bromley.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to table two documents. Contracts for Services, one to the Northern Strategy Group, dated December

21, 2007, and the other to John Todd Holdings Limited, dated January 1, 2008. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Item 15, notices of motions. Item 16, notices of motion for first reading of bills. Item 17, motions. Item 18, first reading of bills. Item 19, second reading of bills. Item 20, consideration in Committee of the Whole of bills and other matters: Tabled Document 1-16-(4), NWT Capital Estimates 2010-2001, with Mr. Abernethy in the chair.

Thank you. I would like to call the standing committee or, sorry, Committee of the Whole to order. The first order of business, Mrs. Groenewegen.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The wish of the committee today is to continue with consideration of the NWT Capital Estimates 2010-2011 starting, I guess, with general comments and moving into the departments of ENR and ITI. Thank you.

Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. With that, does committee agree?

Okay. With that, we will take a short break.

---SHORT RECESS

I’d like to call Committee of the Whole back to order. We are reviewing Tabled Document 1-16(4), NWT Capital Estimates 2010-2011. Mr. Miltenberger, do you have witnesses you would like to bring in?

Yes, Mr. Chairman.

Does committee agree to have the Minister bring in his witnesses?

Agreed? Sergeant-at-Arms, please escort the witnesses into the Chamber.

Thank you. Minister Miltenberger, if I could please get you to introduce your witnesses for the record.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Margaret Melhorn, deputy minister of Finance; Paul Guy, acting deputy minister of Public Works and Services.

Thank you, Minister Miltenberger. We finished on general comments last week. Is there anybody else with additional general comments? Mr. Hawkins.

Thank you. I’d like to speak in regard to the capital plan estimates and I’d just like

to highlight a few areas of both support and concern.

I’m very pleased to see the objectives of reaching the $648 million when we include the next two years into our capital plan. That’s very pleasing, from my point of view, where we’ll get infrastructure dollars out to our Territory and get people working. The only concern I’d have to that is this is a blank program where it causes me some concern. Will we be able to facilitate this? You know, it’s great that we continue to build upon capital investments, but I wonder if the market is in a position to be able to help facilitate the needs of the Territories when we want to build these capital projects.

So I only caution the government in that point of view of how quickly this plan has built up, and not to mention the fact that part of the reason why, if I understand it correctly, we have $426 million to date of capital projects still hanging over us, which would include the 2009-10 season.

The issue really is we keep adding to a plan, but we’re not able to fully fulfill the capital plan every year. So, in other words, we commit a lot of money, don’t manage to spend it all, we carry that into the next year, we commit more money to the capital estimates and we don’t get it all done and so we continue to carry more and more and more. I think these are good things that the capital plan continues to invest into people, into facilities, into our future. By all means I think this is the right thing that needs to be done, but I only, again, express caution in the context of being able to get people to facilitate this, which then spills into the context of what quality will we receive when we do produce these things. Do we have the people, such as project officers? Do we have the skills, you know, whether it’s the accounting people to ensure that the contracts are managed properly, that the contractors build the projects to the highest of quality? Do we have that resource in place? That causes some concern as well. So as we continue to allow the capital plan to grow. Yet again, I have to stress as a good thing, I mean are we in a position to manage it as well. That is where I would then lead into my concern.

If we don’t have the companies to compete in a successful environment, we end up being held hostage by them, whereas if we only have one or two that have been maximizing their bids to the nth degree and taking advantage of the economy.

That said, this is the second year we’re reviewing our capital estimates without the individual dollar numbers being public, which I think is a good strategy. I’ve always believed, as I’ve articulated for many years in a row, saying that if we didn’t show them our cards, chances are they wouldn’t be bidding to that maximized number and I look forward to someday…I certainly hope that someday soon it would be that we would hear the Finance

Minister tell us about a review he’s done, whereas they’ve gone through and taken a good snapshot of the situation to say has our capital plan process become more effective, have our dollars been spent better and has the public sector become more aggressive on bidding on projects whereas the government is the winner as opposed to the banks where we have to borrow more money to make projects continue. Furthermore, will we have to take away from other projects in order to make the ones in existence at this time come to completion?

Mr. Chairman, I want to remind the Minister that part of that process, of course, to make sure we’re getting good value, would be is a review of the change in the capital plan process, whether it’s just focusing on the dollar amounts, on us again scribing these out individually without actual dollars and finding out are we getting the best value by this process. As well, I’d like to hear that would there ever be a review in the context of us moving up the capital plan to make sure that we can help fly with industry. As many of us have heard before, whether you’ve been in the community or even on the streets at the local coffee shop, they’ll tell you stop awarding housing projects at the coldest of days because you can’t build then, but people need to be able to award the projects so they can plan in a timely fashion so they can be ready to build in the spring. Under the old process, as we all know very well, money wouldn’t be released until April 1st and

then, of course, by the time tendering process fulfilled itself, it was fall and we couldn’t build and it seemed to be quite backwards.

I know speaking to people in industry they think the cycle is a much smarter one, which gives them the chance to help plan their projects and facilitate what they do best better.

The last thing I just want to emphasize on and when I talked about quality of projects for us and I talked about the quality of standards making sure that our ballooning budget of capital projects doesn’t cause us to lose control over quality. I would like to certainly say that some of the initiatives highlighted in the capital estimate -- and we’ll go through them page by page -- will definitely be, in my view, what I can define as legacy infrastructure. As we expand our infrastructure highway and look at new horizons by linking communities and giving them year-round access, I think is a good thing. As we continue to renovate schools and replace schools I think that becomes, in my view, legacy infrastructure, because we’re building the promises of tomorrow by giving them the chance today.

Mr. Chairman, that’s all I have at this time. I didn’t necessarily have any question other than the area of whether it be some type of a valuation of the capital estimates in its process, as well as in the

context of the timing and in the context of the fact that we don’t list individual projects by number by itself. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. Minister Miltenberger.