I think I’m getting it. If I were to ask what our current environmental liabilities are, knowing that the fund is about $44 million would tell me that that’s what our current liabilities are right now. Is that correct? If not, maybe I could find out what the current environmental liabilities are.

Okay, so this is obviously a substantial fund. How current are we in terms of knowing what our environmental liabilities are? I imagine we’re moving steadily towards a routine sort of assessment and so on. Are we fairly current on those or are we still catching up with today’s world in that respect?

Thanks very much for this information. Just one last one here. Do we categorize at all? I’m wondering what might, if we know, roughly, what proportion might be due to fossil fuels versus asbestos or contaminants of a different nature.

I wonder, could I ask the Minister to provide that. I don’t want it to be an onerous, time-consuming exercise, but if that could be readily pulled out, that would be useful.

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Minister Miltenberger.

Yes, Mr. Chairman, we’ll provide that information.

Thank you to the Minister. I think on a full cost accounting, I think that sort of information would be useful.

I just want to look now at the Power Subsidy Program. I know, under debt management, we subsidized about $27 million last year and we’re proposing $21 million this year. I see that directly under the Power Subsidy Program we’re subsidizing a little over $11 million each year. Now, that’s up quite a bit from ’11-12 when it was at about $5.2 million, and I know rates are going up and whatnot. Is this a temporary rise or are we settled in at this amount for the indefinite future, at roughly $11 million, and what will influence it as we go forward?

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Mr. Kalgutkar.

It’s never simple, Mr. Chair. Let’s see. Our rate went down but because absolute costs for electricity are up it ends up being a higher amount. Maybe I can get Mr. Kalgutkar to try that one more time and what we can expect to see in the future here.

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. We’re actually going to go to Minister Miltenberger first.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The subsidies are linked to the rates and as the rates of power go up, and we’ve been having the rate increases over the X number of years, even though they’ve been cushioned, the subsidy goes up commensurately, and they’re linked, so they’re going to keep moving together.

I appreciate that plain language version of what’s actually happening here. To plain language it even more, we’re going to be paying more and more subsidies into the future, so it is going up as time goes by. I guess what’s really important here is to try and deal with the underlying costs of generating power, and we’re not putting much towards that. We are putting some, but it’s very modest compared to these sorts of amounts that I’ve been quoting: last year, $27 million; this year, $21 million. It looks like it’s sort of dropping a little bit next year but, obviously, this amount is going up. This is a long-term commitment, so it would be really worthwhile – I’m sure the Minister would agree – investing in how to get those rates down. I throw that out as a comment, but I’d welcome any comments by the Minister. I know he would dearly love to see us figure out how to reduce power rates, fundamentally, as well, which would then, of course, bring down our power subsidy program as well.

We have a common goal here. We are investing significantly and are going to continue to invest, not only money but planning and policy development in things like biomass and solar. We’re going to be coming forward with a very ambitious hydro project that’s going to allow us to link the grids and have reasonable-cost power available for economic development as well as provide power into some communities that are currently on diesel. We are going to, as well, work with Inuvik and other thermal communities on the Liquid Natural Gas Initiative. We are very committed to that.

We also want to push on encouraging people to switch to alternative energy. As well, we want to continue to push efficiencies and conservation, which is also an underappreciated area in terms of what’s possible in terms of savings. We are committed to doing that as well. The reality, though, across the world is the energy costs continue to rise everywhere and it is a challenge for all of us.

Thank you, Minister Miltenberger. Mr. Bromley, your time has expired. Committee, we’re on 5-25. Mr. Bromley.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. To complete this loop here – and I appreciate the Minister’s comments there – I do note in his opening comments that we are reducing our total

contributions to subsidizing these electricity rates by over $6 million this year, but I also observed that none of that reduction is being transferred into actually addressing the cost of power and reducing that through energy initiatives that would help in that way. Would the Minister consider supporting more efforts such as was done in the 16th Assembly? Each year we are dropping now our power subsidy rates somewhat, a significant amount in terms of millions of dollars, and we are not increasing our expenditures on energy expenditures. Would the Minister agree that we should be putting some of these reductions from subsidy that we’re enjoying into actually addressing the costs of power in a real fundamental way?

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Minister Miltenberger.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would agree that we want to, in the coming year, as we look at increasing the amount of money we’re going to put into infrastructure, have a serious discussion how much of that money, that extra $50 million a year goes into energy infrastructure. We will be coming forward, as I have indicated a number of times now and the Premier has also made reference. We are going to come forward with a number of major initiatives, one tied to hydro in the North and South Slave focusing mainly initially on transmission and then we are, as well, going to lay out what we think is a very positive plan as it pertains to liquid natural gas and how we think that will lower energy costs. At the same time, we are going to continue to work on efficiencies, conservation and the rebate. We are going to continue to put more money into all those rebate programs that will assist people in terms of switching to more energy-efficient alternative energy type of units. Thank you.

Mr. Chair, I appreciate those comments. I know the Minister has concerns in this area and we’ll be going after things. He listed quite a number of initiatives that we hope to do. All of them have costs to them. I guess I’m disappointed that here we have $6 million that we are reducing in subsidies and no attempt to increase our efforts in the direction that the Minister has indicated. I will leave it at that, Mr. Chair. That’s all I had on this page. Thank you.