Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Minister Miltenberger.

Thank you, Madam Chair. We are at work looking at expanding the base budget for fire suppression to make it more reflective of some of the costs. One of the challenges we face with every other jurisdiction is we are now quite routinely, at least the last few years and if you look around the world, like in North and South Carolina, for example, extreme weather events that are coming in. We've had some discussions, as a Finance department, about how do we best capture the pressures from extreme weather events that aren't tied to the routine business that supplementary appropriations are designed to capture, that are going to be more and more reflective of what's happening with global warming and climate change.

I appreciate the Member's concern and it's ours as well. We need to capture how we account for those major events that are a very big drain on the public purse. At the same time, we want to make sure that we still use the supplementary reserves appropriately, so part of the discussion is maybe there is a separate column and a separate way to account for those and it's not a discussion that we've finished having and it's a discussion that we'll be continuing to have with committee, as well, as we accept the reality. Most of us would accept the reality that extreme weather is now upon us. I think every jurisdiction in the country is facing that, it doesn't matter which province or territory. Thank you.

Thank you, Minister Miltenberger. Ms. Bisaro.

Thanks, Madam Chair, and thanks to the Minister for his comments. I'm really pleased to hear that the department is starting the discussion and is looking at ways to avoid us overspending our supplementary reserve by half as much as what it was in the first place. So, I'm glad to hear that. I was going to say any guess is going to be better than what we've got, but I guess an educated guess, a better educated guess is going to be I think better for us in the budget in the long run. So, just a comment. Thanks, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Next I have Mr. Bromley.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I think we had three separate hits before we finally got to our final number on fire suppression costs last fiscal year. I'm wondering: do we know if this is the last one or do we anticipate whether there could be more supps for fire suppression for this fiscal year. Obviously, it would be handled by the 18^th Assembly. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Mr. Miltenberger.

Thank you, Madam Chair. We anticipate that this is the final supp that will be required. Thank you.

Thirty-two million dollars. Thank you.

Thank you. I think last year, the largest year we had on record, obviously, it was a challenge. We were a little more prepared this year as a result of having that experience. But I know there was a comprehensive review done by the department on the performance during our '14-15 year that I'm sure we drew upon for the '15-16 year. I wonder if the Minister could tell us any areas that we improved our performance and perhaps our proficiency as a result of that previous year's experience. Thank you.

One of the big areas has been on the preparedness with emergency firefighters and extra crews that were trained and standing by and ready to roll that were there right from the start last year. The year before last we were gearing up just because of the unprecedented nature and trying to recruit emergency firefighters. We had an amazing response, but this year we've kept it in place. We've worked on the training, so we now have a cadre of trained emergency firefighters. We've worked a lot on our communications. We've had the benefit this year of the weather that worked in our favour. We've had some good work with Buffalo in terms of their large land-based air tanker ready to go, the Electra, after a long struggle to get it certified. We anticipate having that one, plus hopefully another one for fire season, which will give us two state-of-the-art land-based aircraft that will help us.

Every year there's a MARS meeting, as well, about all the work that goes on between provinces and territories to see if there are any improvements in terms of equipment as well as the movement of staff and equipment.

So, all in all, I think we've learned some valuable lessons, the big one for me being the communication and having emergency folks ready so we don't have to rely as much on outside resources. Thank you.

Thanks to the Minister for that response. Will we be doing another one this year? Is there an intent to do that? Maybe the Minister commented on that and I missed it. I am just wondering if this is something we now do annually. Thank you.

Yes, Madam Chair. The intent is to do a similar territorial-wide debriefing on the performance and issues and things that need to be identified to follow up on. Thank you.

Thank you, Minister Miltenberger. Anything further, Mr. Bromley?

I did have some comments on the climate change related aspects of this, but I think since this is happening more and more often and coming up repeatedly in this supp, I'll just save it and talk about it later. Thank you.

Okay, thank you. Environment and Natural Resources, forest management, special warrants, $20.908 million; not previously authorized, $3.635 million. Water resources, not previously authorized, $255,000. Total department, special warrant, $20.908 million, not previously authorized, $3.890 million. Agreed?

Thank you. Moving on to page 6, Department of Finance, deputy minister's office, not previously authorized, $22.129 million. Total department, not previously authorized, $22.129 million. Mr. Dolynny.

Thank you, Madam Chair. It gives me great pleasure to finally get to this part of the budget, which has been talked about here in the media for a number of weeks at the end of August and early part of September when residents were notified that the government took a lead action in trying to mitigate the low water expenditures or low water issue at Snare and Bluefish and took it upon themselves to give a bit of a bird's eye view of what was about to come here today. This has been big in the making and I'm glad we are finally having an ability to talk about this appropriation in its full consideration.

First and foremost, just to give a bit of a background, I'll allow the Minister to maybe give us information indicating... The Public Utilities Board had a hand in offering, from what we heard in conversations on the floor of the House here, extensions.

Can you give an idea of what exactly was going on between the department and the Public Utilities Board in terms of these so-called extensions during this last drought season and what did that mean in relationship to the appropriation we have here before us today? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. Minister Miltenberger.

Thank you, Madam Chair. As the appropriation for the previous low water surcharge was spent, the Public Utilities Board wanted to know, given the fact that the low water issue was continuing, what was the intention of the government and what was the intention, then, of the Power Corporation to respond? Were we going to raise rates or was there going to be some other accommodation made. We were monitoring the volumes of flows, the needs, the extent of the low water, and we wanted to be as clear as possible and see what was going to happen. So they wanted to know fairly early in June, if my memory serves me correctly, and we subsequently got three extensions. After the third one it became imperative that we give the PUB some indication by the end of I think it was August, that we were given the latitude of a final six extra days. So we finally had to make the decision to give them the information that they requested, which would become part of the public record in terms of the operations. Thank you.

Everything that we do here is to provide facts for the public to understand the money that we're spending on their behalf, and as the Minister indicated, there was correspondence given to Members. I don't believe that information, in terms of public utility letters, is in the public domain. But I know that Members on this side of the House received some correspondence just in the last week or so, which puts Members in a bit of a handicap situation because we weren't made aware of the correspondence to and fro between the Public Utilities Board and the department. Can the department confirm if this is indeed true? Is there any proof that the department shared high-level information with any of the committees here, both EDI, Economic Development, or Priorities and Planning with respect to pertinent information leading up to the appropriation and the announcement in the early part of September? Was there anything given to committee members to believe that there was something imminent in the works? Thank you.

There was ongoing discussion in just about every venue about the ongoing water and the need to make a decision. When we finally reached the point of having to make a decision, there was a letter written to committee and followed subsequently a couple of days later by the public announcement about that matter. Thank you.