Thank you, Madam Chair. We would like to consider two of the supplementary appropriations that were recently tabled, Supplementary Estimates (Operations Expenditures), No. 4, 2014-2015 and, time permitting, Supplementary Estimates (Infrastructure Expenditures), No. 2, 2015-2016. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Does committee agree?

Thank you. We will reconvene after a brief break. Thank you.

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I’ll call Committee of the Whole back to order. Committee, we agreed to first look at Tabled Document 246-17(5), Supplementary Estimates (Operations Expenditures), No. 4, 2014-2015. I would like to ask the Minister responsible, Minister Miltenberger, if he has opening comments.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am here to present Supplementary Estimates (Operations Expenditures), No. 4, 2014-2015. This document proposes an increase of $25.337 million in operations expenditures associated with a non-cash expenditure for a one-time increase to the total environmental liability in response to changing accounting standards that became effective for the 2014-15 fiscal year.

I am prepared to review the details of the supplementary estimates document.

Thank you. Minister Miltenberger, would you like to bring witnesses into the Chamber?

Yes, I do, Mr. Chair.

Sergeant-at-Arms, please escort in the witnesses. Committee agree?

Minister Miltenberger, please introduce your witnesses, please.

I have with me Mike Aumond, deputy minister of Finance; and Sandy Kalgutkar, deputy secretary to the FMB. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. I would like to open the floor to general comments on Tabled Document 246-17(5), Supplementary Estimates (Operations Expenditures), No. 4, 2014-2015. Mr. Bromley.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I understand this came about as a result of new accounting procedures required by whoever sets those things. I don’t know whether it’s the Auditor General or what. I am happy to see this. I think our government is too. They realize these liabilities are real and are out there, and it’s nice to have some assessments on which to base what the costs are going to be in the future and today.

I understand that there are two components to this. One is assessing existing sites in a little more depth, rather than just knowing they exist and they do have some degree of liability. We are now trying to quantify that a little bit. We’re also adding in sites that were worked on before, non-operating sites.

In terms of the assessment of work that’s been done on estimating costs of cleanup of sites that we have done in the past, what degree of confidence do we have in those? How deep did they go? Do we expect when we get around to doing the work, we will need more work? Is it likely that these are conservative estimates and there is some chance the final cost will be less than what the current appraisal is? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Deputy Minister Aumond.

Thanks for that response. So, did we do any fieldwork on this? Was there an attempt to build in the area of contamination, the degree of contamination, the depth of contamination, that sort of thing, in toward building these estimates? Thank you.

I understand that these are sort of two separate questions in a way. I guess, in terms of registering our liability for our public accounts, which I believe is a part of this exercise, how would those be handled where securities have been assessed but not collected or secured for operating sites? How would that be accounted for?

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Minister Miltenberger.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. What will happen in the broad sense is the $25 million will be booked and will be able to be tracked through the public accounts on a yearly basis. We’ll look at the ongoing work during the year.

In regards to the specific question by the Member, we’re not aware of any sites of the type that he has referenced. Thank you.

Thank you, Minister. Mr. Bromley.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I’ll leave it at that. I can inform the Minister of instances where those in fact have arisen, but that’s another discussion. I’m happy to leave it for now.

Thank you. Committee, we’re taking general comments on Tabled Document 246-17(5). General comments. Ms. Bisaro.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have some questions. I presume that’s acceptable? Thank you. I don’t have major concerns, but I think I need to ask some questions to ensure anybody who is listening to this and wondering about this great expense, to ensure that they understand what this is all about. The Minister stated in his opening remarks that this is a one-time expenditure, but I would suspect that we would see that it’s entirely possible with new developments happening, and/or the discovery of contaminated sites which we haven’t yet discovered, that we would see another one-time increase.

Can the Minister or officials give me some kind of idea if I’m correct in that, and if I am, what magnitude of dollars are we talking about?

Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Minister Miltenberger.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We have a fund and an amount of money before the House that we’ll book. It will draw down against that amount of money, roughly at about $2 million a year. Though we don’t think it will happen, should we stumble across a number of sites that we didn’t know existed that have significant costs attached to them after assessment, we would look at how it would draw down against the money we have. If we start we reach the point because of either increased development, sites coming to light that we weren’t aware of, then we would follow the due process to come back to ensure that we met the new standard.

As to the exact amount of money, I wouldn’t want to hazard… It would be inappropriate for me to hazard a guess on what may happen that far down the road. Thank you.

Thanks to the Minister. Yes, I’m not surprised that you don’t want to guess, either, as to the amount. So, just to confirm, at this point we think that we have found all the contaminated sites, both operating and non-operating on Commissioner’s land in the NWT. Is that right? Thanks.

Yes.

When I use the term “Commissioner’s lands,” I’m thinking it’s the land that we’ve taken over since devolution, but I think those are called Territorial lands. So we think we’ve found all the sites on Territorial lands and Commissioner’s lands, just to confirm for me. Thank you.

On all those lands, except where there is an existing permit that was already granted. But for the most part, yes.

Thanks. I’ll change direction a little bit here. This is a non-cash item, as the Minister said in his opening remarks and he kind of alluded

to a bit in talking to Mr. Bromley about how do we pay for this stuff. So, we’re recording a number of $25 million-and-some. It’s non-cash at the moment, but how do we pay for this $25 million? Because we’ve said we have $25 million of remediation work to do. So, how do we pay for that? Do we have a reserve, or are we accumulating money over a period of time? How do we end up with $25 million to do the remediation work whenever it needs to be done? Thank you.

There are two things. We’ve booked the number, a fixed amount as a liability that we have responsibility for, and we’ve built into our yearly budgets to the base at this point roughly $2 million a year to start working away at the remediation of the various sites as the work plan dictates. Thank you.

Thanks to the Minister for that. I just have one last question. It’s my understanding that the public sector accounting principle that we are coming into adherence with applies to non-operating sites.

Could I get confirmation on that and could I also get confirmation that our number includes both non-operating and operating sites? Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Deputy Minister Aumond.

Thank you, deputy minister. Ms. Bisaro.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. Okay, I guess I misunderstood the other day, but that’s good. Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Thank you. Committee, we are taking general comments on Supplementary Estimates (Operations Expenditures), No. 4, 2014-2015. Is committee agreed to go into detail?

Supplementary Estimates (Operations Expenditures), No. 4, 2014-2015, Department of Finance, operations expenditures, office of the comptroller general, not previously authorized, $25.337 million.

Total budget, not previously authorized, $25,337 million.

Committee is agreed we’ve concluded Tabled Document 246-17(5). Agreed?

Ms. Bisaro.