The project would be connected to the increase in our borrowing limit. We would access that to put our portion of the construction of that road.

We would borrow money for our share of that road construction. What puts this project in a different category than borrowing money for any project of all the priorities that have been talked about here today and talked about every day when it comes to the aspirations of the

people of the Northwest Territories? What puts that project into the borrowing category?

Mr. Speaker, what puts this project in that special light is the fact that Canada is one of the only countries in the circumpolar world that doesn’t have road access to the Arctic Ocean. Certainly, that is something that the federal government felt, from a security and a sovereignty standpoint, was something that they wanted to see happen.

We will have a road network in this country that will go from coast to coast to coast, finally, with the construction of the Inuvik to Tuktoyaktuk highway. It is a project that the federal government deems of having national significance. It is a partnership. The federal government is committed to the $150 million. We do need to, once the environmental assessment is done in the new year, sit down with the federal government on the funding arrangement. Our hope is that it would be 75-25 cost sharing. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Your final supplementary, Mrs. Groenewegen.

Mr. Speaker, the Minister speaks of the desire of the federal government from a sovereignty point of view to have this road built. What about the aspirations of the people of the Northwest Territories? How are we going to calculate whether the significant capital investment of this government and the ongoing costs to maintain and upkeep this road is in the interests of the people of the Northwest Territories? By what process are you going to gauge that, given all of the competition of these capital dollars? How are you going to find that out? Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, on an annual basis, we do go through the business planning process. The leaders in the Beaufort-Delta have certainly been talking about the Inuvik-Tuk road for a number of years now, decades in fact. We see it as the first stage in the construction of the Mackenzie Valley Highway that will be integral to the economic growth and success of this territory.

It is something that, with a partnership with the federal government, we feel that we can get it done. It is in an area of our territory right now, in the Beaufort-Delta, where there is not a lot of equipment moving, there is not a lot of work and it is economically depressed. We feel that a project of this size, this magnitude, will really invigorate the region, get people to work and also help with the cost of living in the community of Tuktoyaktuk and any goods that are flown out of Tuktoyaktuk to other communities in the Nunakput riding. We do see the advance of exploration of both onshore and offshore with the development of the Inuvik to Tuktoyaktuk highway as something that is desperately needed. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. The honourable Member for Range Lake, Mr. Dolynny.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I will follow up on my two-day review of the WSCC federal penalty and our Safe Advantage program assessments. There is over $750,000 in two years of penalties and our escalating claims cost experience, and I thought we should address the Minister responsible for the Workers’ Compensation and Safety Commission with some of the following questions.

Given the dismal performance in the past few years of the GNWT in our safety performance, many would find it odd that the GNWT as a whole has only had a modest increase of 13 cents to our new assessment rate of 79 cents per $100 of payroll. Can the Minister validate to the public that this rate assessment is truly indicative of the performance claims growth and classification befitting of WSCC’s largest client and largest number of clients? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. The Minister responsible for the Workers’ Safety and Compensation Commission, Mr. Lafferty.

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. The GNWT’s assessment rate is increasing from 66 cents in 2012 to 79 cents in 2014. That is an overall 20 percent increase, which is also the maximum annual allowable increase set by the Governance Council. If the 20 percent cap wasn’t issued or in place by this government, there would be required a payment of 86 cents in 2013. That would be in addition of the 30 percent increase at that time, instead of 20 percent based on the claims experience. Those are the reasons why the Governance Council is pursuing the rate increase as we speak. Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, I don’t want to split hairs on math, but I believe 13 cents on 79 cents is more of a 16 percent, not 20 percent. Given we heard from the Minister of Human Resources, health and safety claims both for GNWT showed significant increases for the Department of Health, Justice and also Transportation, if we were to compare these departments with job descriptions and classifications in the current 2013 WSCC Rate Guide, the comparable private industry fields would find the following: for Health, $1.61; for Justice, $2.58; and Transportation, $5.85.

Given the law of averages, can the Minister explain how the GNWT can be assessed at only a single rate of 79 cents per 100 when, clearly, the three most prolific and costly departments with health and safety concerns are, on average, two to over seven

times less than the industry average? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, that information that I have from WSCC is that GNWT is one employer under the Workers’ Compensation Act and also is classified as industry subclass specifically developed for government, and whose current rate reflects on government’s long-term history of claims experience. Due to that increase in GNWT’s claim experience over the last few years, this will continue to increase up to the maximum of 20 percent per year until it covers the full cost of the GNWT’s liability. That is where we are at, Mr. Speaker. Mahsi.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the Minister’s response. Will the Minister commit to facilitate an independent oversight review of the WSCC of all employer industry classifications and assessment rates as it pertains to proper claims experience? Would the Minister commit to facilitate a full public audit of accounting in relationship to written claims made by the WSCC in terms of the depletion of the Workers’ Protection Fund due to rising costs of health care services and continued downward trend in investment markets? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, the Governance Council does engage in third-party actuary on an annual basis to review any impacts of the Workers’ Protection Fund and also the employee industry classification, the claims experience and also the recommended assessment rates. WSCC is also audited annually by the Auditor General of Canada, but we just had a recent audit done. I am confident that the audits of the Auditor General of Canada and the use of the independent actual rate of WSCC have the new checks and balances in place as we move forward. Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Dolynny.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Again, I have great faith in the Auditor General of Canada. Again, we are asking for some public input in terms of the audit and information shared with the public.

On the subject of governance, will the Minister responsible for the WSCC commit to facilitate a full review of governance on how the GNWT is being assessed by the WSCC employer industry classification and assessment rates? Will the Minister commit to tabling all findings and correspondence from the department and the WSCC to this House? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, back in 2001, December, this Legislature completed a comprehensive review of the WSCC. Then it was WCB. That report tabled was called Act Now. The recommendations on the report, coupled with the

2006 Auditor General’s operational review of WSCC and the yearly audit by the Auditor General ensured compliance of the WSCC. I will be sharing that information that the Member is referring to today with the chair and the president of the WSCC. Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. The honourable Member for Frame Lake, Ms. Bisaro.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are addressed to the Minister of Finance. In the last month or six weeks or so, the Minister and his staff have been travelling throughout the NWT and doing budget consultations. I think they have been very well received in the centres where they were held. I agree that it was a good move for the department and the Minister to take the budget discussion show on the road, so to speak.

Over the number of presentations and discussions that have been held, there have been remarks by the media, there have been remarks by the Minister, they have talked about how the input may or may not be used from these budget consultations. On the part of the Minister and on the part of the department, what is his intent in using the input from these various consultations relative to the 2013-14 operations budget? Thank you.

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

Thank you. This has been an interesting exercise and there’s a number of key perspectives that we were looking for. We wanted feedback from the people of the Northwest Territories. We want to see what kind of responses we can get in terms of the things we’re now doing, which in this case confirm the focus that this Assembly has, for example, on prevention and the need to put more money into prevention, the need to sort out red tape, duplication program overlap, the need to look at how we add more money to our infrastructure budget. The other big issue is, of course, the support for sustainable development and make sure we have processes that are as supportive as possible to business.

So as an Assembly we are engaged in a lot of those issues already and it was corroborating support for the fact that this Legislature is fairly well tuned into the needs of their constituents. We also heard a number of very specific suggestions that we’re going to look at as we do the budget and fine-tune the main estimates and bring back to committee and to the MLAs to look at. So it was reinforcement that, in many cases, we’re on the right track.

We have to always do more and there are some specific suggestions that were given to us in a host of areas that we’re going to look at in terms of possible inclusion, if not in this budget, in subsequent budgets. Thank you.

Thank you to the Minister. I attended the discussion and the presentation in Yellowknife and I found it very interesting, and the Minister is right that there were some interesting discussions and some interesting ideas that were brought up there. One of the things that was mentioned at the meeting here in Yellowknife was that there was no reference at all to revenue in the budget presentation, and in the documents and in the discussions that were held that night. So I’d like to ask the Minister if he can explain why there was no discussion and no consideration of new revenues in the budget at these budget discussions. Thank you.

Thank you. In fact, at every one of the seven communities where we had meetings, somewhere during the course of the evening we talked about the new revenues that are going to come, and that in our case they are tied most immediately to devolution, that we were not considering tax increases at this juncture, given the economic circumstance and fragility of the world economic landscape. So we’ve indicated that next time, and we’ve heard some other requests, as well, for full disclosure of all the budget numbers laid out more in keeping with the main estimates. So we heard a number of issues in terms of the information requested that we will look at speaking to the next go-around when we do this next year. So the revenue piece will be put out there as well.

This particular initial go-around was to give people a sense of the fiscal constraints we’re operating under and the decisions we have to make if we want to move money between program areas if there’s enhancement required. Thank you.

Thank you to the Minister for the explanation. I have to say that I was fully expecting, and I wasn’t disappointed, that he brought up devolution and the money that we’re going to get from devolution. It’s unfortunate but, in my mind, it seems that’s the money that we’re getting from devolution is going to be the one item that is going to solve all of our problems.

The Minister mentioned that revenue was discussed at almost every one of the meetings, and I would like to say that there have been two roundtables on budget and finance that have been held over the last four or five years, I guess three or four years, and those roundtables in the summary both suggested that the government should look at new revenue sources. The Minister is suggesting we don’t need to do that, I think he’s suggesting we don’t need to do that because we’ve got devolution money coming.

So I’d like to ask the Minister, we’ve had recommendations from roundtables to look at revenue options, why have we not done that? Thank you.