Bob McLeod

This is something that has been a priority of this government. We work very closely with the Canadian Association of Small Businesses that see red tape as a hindrance to making progress, so we are working through our Refocusing Government Committee of Cabinet. Mr. Chair, I’d like to ask the chair of that committee to provide further information. I’d ask the Minister of Finance to provide more detail. Thank you.

Mr. Chair, we have no criteria right now. What we have done is we have requested deputies to identify potential areas that perhaps could be eligible for decentralization at some point. We are doing some work, identifying inventories of office space and housing that is available throughout the Territories. We are getting requests from MLAs that we should decentralize immediately.

I have indicated that we are going to work with committee. Certainly, for those centres that have office space and houses, the likelihood is that we probably could move fairly quickly, but we are going to work with...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I was going to suggest that maybe we had a job shadowing opportunity for Mr. Bromley with a strategic analyst, but through you I’ll ask Mr. Warren to answer Bureau of Statistics question.

Mr. Chair, later on in one of the pages is where the money is for the Aboriginal governments. This is the contribution from the federal government to our government for implementation planning. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Definitely, I think we would benefit greatly from the input of Members.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. To my left is Penny Ballantyne, secretary to Cabinet; to my right is Mark Warren, assistant deputy minister for the Executive.

I will provide a copy of the letter to the Member. We expect to be close to finalizing our ambitious work plan by the end of this summer.

I am pleased to present the Department of Executive’s main estimates for the fiscal year 2012-2013. The goals for the Department of Executive are centred on our role in ensuring effective coordination of government activities; supporting informed decision-making related to policies, planning and programming; and coordinating the implementation of strategic activities to advance the priorities of the 17th Legislative Assembly.

The overall proposed budget for the department is $22.862 million for 2012-13, which is an increase of $8.857 million or 63 percent from the 2011-2012 Main Estimates. The...

Mr. Chair, definitely we would look at reapplying for funding now that we now have support for it. Right now we are taking a bilateral approach dealing with Aboriginal governments. This would help develop a vision going forward from the previous Assemblies or so. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

As per our normal course, we’ll make sure committee is apprised as we move forward. Thank you.