Bob Bromley

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I would like to pick up here where I started earlier on the questions with respect to the Intergovernmental Council on Land and Resource Management. The Minister indicated that the department will be coordinating the activities of this structure, and it notes here that the division will be providing support to this structure. This is still a somewhat obscure structure for Members, certainly for myself and members of the public, that needs to be developed. I am wondering if I can find out what will be the role of this new structure. Thank you.

I was aware of that. I probably wasn’t clear with the question I’m asking. I’m asking more specifically on where we are at in achieving our goals. What are the statistics that indicate the trend in our succession planning? It used to be X percent in five years are going to retire. What’s the change? Thank you.

Thank you for that information. Taking over lands, I imagine, and informing about lands, will be the Department of Lands. The Premier, again, has said the increase in budget here is due to our role of this department in meeting lands negotiations. I see there’s one additional person in this budget for this division. Is that the lands person? Is that where our expense is there? Thank you.

Thank you for that, Minister. If we have questions with the information that’s been provided by the department, is this confidential information or are we allowed to ask questions to clarify what the situation is?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. In my simplistic view of things, of course, I see quite a difference between the lead role in informing and the lead role in negotiations. The Premier said we are taking over the lead role from the federal government. I also asked how the federal government’s role has changed. It could be simply the mirror image of what I’ve heard, but that doesn’t seem to go very far to actually explain how the fiduciary role of the federal government has changed in relation to these questions. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. The Minister of Finance does indeed present a rosy picture in his budget address, but unfortunately, it does not reflect the realities we are dealing with in this House. I would like to review some of his budget address comments here.

He noted that we are taking on considerable new responsibilities in about six weeks now, a little less, but I have strong concerns that we are not prepared to take these on in the manner intended and needed, and I will be speaking to this over the course of this session to make clear some of the shortcomings and liabilities that we and...

I’d be happy to wait, Mr. Chair. I didn’t hear the Premier say which section, but I’d be happy to wait for the appropriate one. Of course, we haven’t passed the whole department, so I’d also be happy to wait until we go to the final.

In reflection, I have to be quite disappointed that the Premier is not willing to welcome any input from our citizens on the issues that our people face. That’s shocking to me. It depends on what the question is on whether he is interested or not, so that’s a bit shocking, but let’s go with it.

With so many informed and caring citizens in our employment, and I assure the Premier, and although he sounds doubtful that we do have a significant number, there is some concern that GNWT may be tempted to silence public debate by preventing GNWT employees from expressing their opinions, even when the...

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thanks for the Minister’s clarification there. Again, I don’t know, but it just seems like it would be a good thing to have that built in somewhere in here, and maybe it is at some point, but I think that sort of clarity would be good. Although we hear about it in other forums, it might be good even in a narrative sense at the beginning of the department in the budget document here just to have that clarity. Just a suggestion there.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. My questions are for the Premier today. I’d like to start by noting that a democracy works best when all citizens are able to speak their minds.

Would the Premier not agree that we should welcome respectful input from everyone if we want to get the best result?