Daryl Dolynny

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to introduce, through you and to you, a resident of Weledeh, Mr. Spencer Decorby. Thanks for joining us. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. As was eloquently just spoken by some of my colleagues, there are a number of initiatives on the go here in the Northwest Territories within this department. A lot of them have to do with legislative framework, and I just want to mention some of these here.

As I said earlier, we have the Health and Social Services Professions Act. We’ve got changes to the Child and Family Services Act. We’ve got the Mental Health Act, which is pending. We’ve got a Human Tissue Donation Act, which might have some dollars attached to it potentially during this year. We have, potentially, a...

I’d appreciate if we can get that level of detail. Again, interest compounded daily, monthly, yearly adds up, especially when you’re dealing with potentially over $11 million, $12 million. Again, public accounts has shown us that that rolling average went down for a couple years and now it’s back up there. Again, I think it was around $7 million. I encourage the department to keep a handle on that because that’s a cost. It’s a cost we don’t talk about. It’s a cost that’s a burden to the taxpayer.

To the question, though, in terms of zero-based budgeting and looking at forecasting for the 2015...

Good afternoon, committee. I’d like to call Committee of the Whole back to order. With that, we’ll continue with the Department of Finance, opening comments. Minister Miltenberger.

Again, the confusion on this file in terms of when these are going to be activating from private to consignment. To my question which still remains, there is going to be a significant shift happening in September of 2015, in terms of the overall model, 50 percent of our population, 50 percent of our inventory goes from private to consignment. What will the department do in order to make this seamless so that they can at least communicate that change to Members?

Mr. Chair, just so I’m clear before I leave this activity, is that we know under current FAM policy that the department, under the guidance of the Minister or deputy minister, was allowed to move up to $250,000 of unallocated, unused funds, funded positions, and move them to another activity without having to get the proper appropriation of the House. Was this activity done in the last fiscal year? Is that reflected at all in the increased potentially we are seeing in this category over and above main estimates? Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Does committee agree?

Thank you, Madam Chair. I appreciate having the ability to come back to this Liquor Revolving Fund. I apologize. Earlier I was ahead of my questions here.

I have to say with a degree of trepidation here, I’m quite confused with this category in terms of how this is being evaluated and the discrepancies, knowing that we’ve gone from a private to a consignment model. I’ve tried to follow the margins, the dollars, the increase in agents’ commissions and, again, in looking at a note regarding the net revenue amounts being mentioned in the notes. Would the department agree to maybe having an interim...

With these vacancies, which sounds like it’s around the corporate average of 10 percent, and I’m assuming these are funded positions, I guess to the question, do those monies remain in that activity or has the department used those monies in other facets during the course of the year? Or is this money allocated for these positions? Do they stay within the category of wages and benefits?

Mr. Speaker, I do appreciate the Minister’s comments here, but it appears that we’re still moving very slowly on this serious issue.

We can only assume that hiring the Child Welfare League to help the GNWT with the action plan and the numerous and new enhanced activities that we’ve heard and been proposed will cost considerable money. Yet it appears that no new additional resources have been used or put forth in the budget, which suggests failure.

Can the Minister indicate how realistic is it that his department is able to accomplish all this with no new investment? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.