Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. The honourable Member for Weledeh, Mr. Bromley.

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.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions are addressed to the Minister of Finance, as well, today. I want to follow up on the questions asked by my colleague Mr. Ramsay. He and I were obviously on the same page when we were developing our questions relative to the budget address.

The Program Review Office has been there for three years, since 2008, and I agree that it was a necessary office for us to set up. I have some concerns with the results as well. The budget address read by the Minister lists six reviews that have been done by the Program Review Office. They have done other work, I presume, as well. I’d like to ask the Minister which of those reviews or what work that the Program Review Office has done has had an impact on the development of this budget.

Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. The honourable Minister of Finance, Mr. Miltenberger.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The office building for sure has an impact as we think about this budget and the budget that’s going to follow this one in terms of what flexibility and capacity does it give us if we know we’re going to have a $100 million savings. We know that we’re identifying a $100 million savings over the life of the lease. We know that we’re doing work in a number of very critical areas that relate the programs in education and health that are going to be very significant and we identify those as areas for future work or future decisions because we’re not going to be able to make those final decisions in the life of this Assembly. Those are some of the areas that we contemplate as we carry on the work of government for this budget and thinking into the future for the 17th Assembly.

So it is, as the budget address indicates, that apart from the review of the office building space within Yellowknife and the decision made to go based on that review, everything else that the Program Review Office has done will be for the next Assembly. That wasn’t my understanding when this office was established three years ago, that some of that work, more of that work would have an impact on the work of this Assembly. So the Minister has indicated that there was no political appetite. It was his understanding that people didn’t want to proceed; people on this side of the House, I guess. So I’d like to ask the Minister where his position came from. What was it? What conversation did we have? What update did we have? What letter did he receive that led him to the position that there was no political will to go forward and that we should not carry on with inclusive schooling and PTR, for instance?

It’s my recollection of the last briefing we gave to committee where we identified the work that was being done on these various and looking at what was possible. Some of the complexities, some of the impacts as it would be felt depending what the decision was in terms of, for example, the PTR being higher, considerably higher than is required under legislation, or changes to the inclusive schooling budget that would allow us to reprofile. It was at those meetings and the feedback and the discussion and the juncture where we were in this Assembly that there was not going to be much political appetite to get into a contentious issue of possibly reducing or reprofiling education money to schools, for example.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have to say that I’m distressed by that answer. It sounds to me as though the last update we had from the Program Review Office, which was some months ago, to my recollection, quite a long time ago, the

Minister made an assumption based on conversations around the table and feedback from Members. I’d like to ask the Minister to confirm to me that there was no correspondence. I presume it was from the Standing Committee on Priorities and Planning. Did he receive any correspondence from the committee which led him to make the decision that he did, or did he make the decision on his own? Thank you.

I will commit to confirm that for the Member. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Your final, short supplementary, Ms. Bisaro.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I thank the Minister for that commitment. I look forward to receiving that in short order.

I’ve mentioned that I’m a little concerned about the amount of work that the office has done. I’d like to ask the Minister if he could, maybe not today, but if he could commit to provide for the Members the efficiency of the office as a percentage of the savings that the office has determined from their reviews and from the work that they’ve done so that their savings as a percentage of the cost of the office. Thank you.

I will look at the wording of the question so it’s clear exactly how the Member sees us doing this. For example, if we’ve budgeted to save $100 million over the life of the lease of the office building in Yellowknife, if that’s the kind of math we use, or will that not be satisfactory to the Member. So I’ll have to check Hansard to see how we could best respond. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. The honourable Member for Mackenzie Delta, Mr. Krutko.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In regard to my Member’s statement, it has come to my attention that there has been a letter sent to two elderly individuals who are in the Joe Greenland Centre receiving long-term care support. Mr. Speaker, I’d just like to read a sentence out of the letter. It says, “The staff will help you transition to your family’s home on or before February 16, 2011, by 5:00 p.m.” So they’ve got to be out of there exactly at 5:00 p.m., February 16th .

Mr. Speaker, we had a public meeting in Aklavik on January 25th , with the Minister of Health, the

Minister of Housing and also the deputy minister of Health. It was a four-hour meeting with over 100 people, the residents of Aklavik in attendance. That was a meeting where the community... It was the first time they have ever been consulted on the

closure of the Joe Greenland long-term care side of the wing. But yet, Mr. Speaker, we committed at that time to work with the community to develop a transitional plan, look at exactly how the families are going to be dealt with, the employees that are basically going to be losing their jobs, and try to find a workable way through this situation.

I’d like to ask the Minister of Health and Social Services why this letter was sent after the commitments we made in public in the Aklavik community meeting, and more importantly, the commitments we made there, or the Minister made, to work with the community to work out a smooth transition for this process and not to have these types of letters sent to family members and notify them that they’ve got two weeks to vacate the premises.