Bob Bromley

I didn’t hear the timing of the three months’ work that’s happening now or the future, but I think the committee would be interested in how that pilot goes. What is the schedule? I think we heard in the Department of Health that the plan is to incorporate all of the health authorities. Is that true for all authorities in Education and so on? Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, thanks again to the Minister’s commitment. I appreciate that. I do note that this year’s travel budget projections are slightly down from last year’s, in line with what the Minister was saying. The Minister will acknowledge that $17 million in annual travel costs is a big bill for half of our civil service. Even an efficiency of 10 percent would free up major dollars for other needs. Some departments seem to have extraordinarily high travel costs, in comparison to others, with no obvious explanation. We need a challenge and verification method for ensuring travel is being...

Presumably they used to cover that from their own funds and they did their own thing. Are the chargebacks, do we know, covering these new costs as we take them over, or are we having to fill in a bit? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions follow up on my Member’s statement earlier today with questions to the Minister of Finance. Obviously, not every employee travels. The $7,000 per person is an average travel cost across the entire government, but for every employee who never travels, there is another average employee spending double that, or $14,000, and every one of them has a boss who is signing a travel authorization.

Does the process for putting forward an approval request for travel include the requirement to demonstrate that alternatives to travel have been considered and found...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I want to just ask a little bit about our TSC services for authorities. I noticed that this division provides services to the Deh Cho, Sahtu, and Stanton Territorial Health Authorities. First of all, how long have we provided that service to them? Thank you.

I have no problem with necessary travel adding to an employee’s travel point collection, but how are we sure a travel decision isn’t influenced by travel points rewards?

Perhaps there are lessons here for all departments. Video conferences and teleconferences are not the same as meetings in person, but at $7,000 in travel per employee across the entire government, I know that every travel authorization is not being critically reviewed before signing off. I will have questions for the Minister of Finance.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. A quick question on contract services. I see it’s up about 30 percent this year. Am I right in thinking that might be related to building demolitions or is there any explanation that the Minister can provide for that leap in contract service expenditures?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It’s great to see all these students out here today in pink, and for those of us who caught the flash mob, we realize we’re in the presence of a bunch of great dancers, both students and teachers. Mahsi.

---Applause

During this budget review, I’ve been examining the startling figures for travel by GNWT departmental employees. For example, Aboriginal Affairs will spend over $13,000 per employee for travel in ‘13-14, or $520,000, over half a million for 39 workers. MACA anticipates $18,000 per employee, over $2 million for 115 employees. ENR projects $2.5 million in travel...

Thanks to the Minister for those comments. I know I have seen lots of individual projects where it was sometimes 30 or 40 years return, so I recognize the department has been doing some of that because of some other significant gains.

Would it be possible to get the same sort of information, essentially the 30 percent on heat demand, for our power demand? What is our proportion of power load that is met through renewable energy of whatever source, hydro, thermal and so on? That would be great. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I do have some general comments and I will base them on the Minister’s introductory remarks so it will be easy, hopefully, to follow along.

I do appreciate the work that the department does in the area of culture and heritage, and I’m particularly pleased that our staff have managed to negotiate the $1 million-plus revenue from Nunavut to help with the storage costs for Nunavut-based artifacts. Those are important artifacts. They need to be stored properly and there is a real cost, so I appreciate the department figuring out how to get those covered.

I also appreciate...