Bob McLeod

I am sure the Member would be pleased to hear that that work is well underway. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

We do work with all Members in this Assembly. We brief them on all of the different energy plans. We take all of their input and come up with a plan that’s acceptable to all of us. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m very pleased to recognize a constituent of Yellowknife South, Lona Hegeman. With her is Dr. Neal Hegeman and his wife, Sandy, and daughters Melinda and Katrina. Welcome to our Legislative Assembly. Thank you.

It’s not a quid pro quo. We will identify some of the houses to go to remote communities, but it doesn’t necessarily mean we will put a decentralized position in there immediately.

As we go through the business planning process, which we’ll be meeting with committees early this fall, at that time we expect that we’ll be able to outline the positions that will be decentralized.

We always have a plan, so you can be sure of that.

As we’ve announced in the budget, we will be spending $21 million over three years to build 100 houses in communities throughout the Northwest Territories. We are also spending $783,000 for an additional 69 market rental housing units, and we’ve also approved in the Infrastructure Acquisition Plan for 2014-15 $300,000 for office space acquisition.

Our Department of Human Resources has implemented a Regional Recruitment Strategy to address the high vacancy rates outside of headquarters. With the 2015-16 Business Plan, we’ll be identifying which...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I, too, would like to welcome all the visitors in the gallery and Gordon Graydon, who walks with me occasionally in the fieldhouse. I also want to recognize a Page from Yellowknife South, Chris Sangris, and also thank all the Pages for all the good work they do here. Thank you.

As it is our normal practice to brief the standing committee on all of these plans, we will continue to do so. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As we’ve pointed out, we’ve taken a three-phased approach to decentralization. We’ve now completed phase one and phase two and started phase three. I’m pleased to say that to date we’ve decentralized 124 positions from Yellowknife to centres outside of the capital, and we are actively discussing other opportunities for further decentralization under phase three. Through the leadership of the Minister of Finance and the Department of Finance, our expectation is that we will be able to identify to the standing committees as we undergo the 2015-16 business planning process...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to recognize Trevor Teed. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

We’ve created 206 new territorial government jobs to provide for devolution, and as of May 6th there were 60 vacant positions. Now that we’re near the end of May, I expect the majority of those jobs have been filled, but I will commit to reviewing the numbers again and provide the information to the Member. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.