Bill Braden

Madam Speaker, my questions this afternoon are for the Minister responsible for the Financial Management Board Secretariat related to the process of consultation and changes in business plans and projects. Madam Speaker, it’s bewildering that Members were put through a cycle in the last few days of hearing again and again and again from one Minister that a project was a done deal, the money was in place, it was gone, it was over, and then for the Minister of Finance or FMBS to come before this Assembly and ask permission for what the Minister said is already a done deal. This is the dilemma...

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I seek unanimous consent to deal with the motion I gave notice of earlier today. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. When a plan is brought before the Assembly and approval is given, there is an expectation that it will happen or that at least an explanation will be provided in a timely manner why it’s not happening. Until a few days ago, Madam Speaker, this House was not aware that the plans to invest that money in the TTC here in Yellowknife had been changed. Can the Minister explain why this Assembly, and certainly at least the Members for Yellowknife, were not made aware of the stoppage of a major program approved by this House? Why didn’t he tell us about it? Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. The Minister of Health and Social Services and, I believe, the Premier yesterday did indeed offer to provide Members with further substantiation of the move of the Territorial Treatment Centre to Hay River. Without getting into it in detail, Madam Speaker, it was quite an extensive document, but did not provide me with the substantiation that I was looking for, Madam Speaker, and that is the consultation, the collaboration, the cooperation of the many stakeholders that this community has in providing services to the children with severe behavioural problems who are...

Mr. Chairman, I move we report progress.

Detail.

Abused, disabused. We’re being badly let down in this case. That is the point I want to make. I want to ask the Minister, does he accept that the normal conventions and the rules that we understand we’re operating under here were not followed in this case? Does the Minister accept that the rules were not followed in this case?

Okay. So $2.4 million being shifted from an approved project for Yellowknife to a different community is within Cabinet’s tolerance of saying we don’t have to bother telling anybody. Is that true? Have I got that right?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Respecting committee’s normal process here of saving detailed or specific questions to that item on the page, I will not be talking specifically to the Territorial Treatment Centre project, but it sets the context for the questions that I have and that is related to what Mr. Ramsay was speaking about and questions earlier today in the House.

We have protocols that we have worked hard to develop in this House and in this consensus approach that we try to take here. As plans are formulated, developed and eventually approved in this Assembly and anticipated and expected...

Thank you, Madam Speaker. We are about two months into the new fiscal year now. There must have been some months in the past fiscal year that the government had new information and changed its mind about something but didn't tell us. Will the Minister tell this Assembly today what was it, several months ago obviously, that caused Cabinet to change its mind about the investment in the TTC here in Yellowknife? Thank you, Madam Speaker.