Bob McLeod

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Certainly, we will put in a good word to the Board of Management. I think it’s very important to have good information to help make good decisions. We’d be happy to share our information with the committee so that they get the benefit of all the information the government has. Thank you.

Mr. Chair, that is correct.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. In this area we make sure that we provide high-level coordination to make sure the work gets done, and also we provide support to all of the issues that you raised and also to all the Cabinet committees. In terms of resources that we have there, maybe I’ll ask through you, Mr. Chairman, to have my secretary to Cabinet expand on that.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Members, for your comments. Perhaps the best approach is to address each of the comments raised by the individual MLAs.

With regard to relationship with Aboriginal governments and our employees, this is something that we’ve taken as a very important priority. We will be releasing our Aboriginal Engagement Strategy, I think maybe tomorrow. The reason we haven’t released it yet is we were translating into all of the Aboriginal languages. We’ve managed to get that done now. Our whole Aboriginal Engagement Strategy is based on respect, recognition and responsibility...

I think our objective in tightening up the criteria, in the past we’ve had political groups and environmental groups applying for funding, and there’s a whole bunch of groups out there that look for funding, and I guess we tried to tighten it up so that it addresses those that we want to reach out to. After every fiscal year or every call, and after the money’s been given out, we review the program on an annual basis. We will be reviewing it again after this year.

Yes, I do, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. That was a request from the last government that the PRO is working on. The request is still out there. I don’t know if we’ve had any feedback from committee as to what areas they would want to see covered.

Yes, I do, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. This is a fund that we use to work with Aboriginal governments. Instead of dealing with individual meetings, we split it out amongst the seven Aboriginal governments. I believe they are all in the neighbourhood of $50,000. So this year we parcelled it out amongst all the Aboriginal governments and the money has all been given out. Once it’s approved, it will be. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I was going to say as soon as possible, but I think a better idea is it’s our intention to meet with the office of the Auditor General to get more background and insight into his recommendations. I would expect that probably within six months we will be able to have some idea with where we’re going with this. Thank you, Mr. Chair.