Floyd Roland

Mr. Chairman, the other area of this is the review. Members are aware of that in Refocusing Government, looking at boards and agencies and their role in delivering the services across the Northwest Territories. This is one of those areas where we have to take that review and see how we do, in fact, deliver services to the people of the Northwest Territories.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Territorial Power Support Program has grown substantially over the last number of years. Questions about energy and its supply and how we provide this subsidy program need to be reviewed. For the most part, on average, when we do a comparison, most households can live within the 700 kilowatt hours, and that is something we also take into consideration when we set the program parameters.

Again, it will be one of the areas as we proceed forward on the energy file: reviewing this program and seeing how it best works in the Northwest Territories. At the existing pace, we...

Mr. Chairman, the first part — not all the work is going to be done within a matter of three and a half months. Most of that work has been undertaken already within the different departments, which are working with Health and Social Services to come up with the figures, the program delivery levels and what’s been mandated for delivery.

There are a number of areas and departments working at coming up with all the information and the potential results of that in the sense of what levels of services we are going to continue to fund and what level of services we are going to say that, as the...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. For the record the Member has, on a number of occasions now, talked about the fact that the payroll situation has only been six and a half months. It’s been a couple of years since the department became involved. It was a lesser rate, and, yes, it has grown significantly over the last piece. That is a different piece of the puzzle. This is dealing with the accumulated deficit building over a number of years. We are dealing with it now and going forward with a newer plan.

For the actual details of how it breaks down, or the work that’s been done to date, I’d have to go...

We’ve made the offer to committee to work with committee closely on this process of how we proceed and come up with a common practice we can support going ahead. So yes, we’re going to be working with committee before a draft acquisition plan and before committee members. We have quite a number of issues to deal with in that time.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Again, the department has begun this review, a zero-based review, looking at program spending to determine in what areas the spending is occurring, whether it is authorized in the sense of mandated programs or has there been a growth in program delivery in areas we would call expansion of the service delivery, though it may not be directly tied to a mandate. That expectation has come in.

I’ll give you an example, Mr. Chairman. The department, when they initially looked at the area of services provided to people in the Northwest Territories — this is a number of years...

Mr. Chairman, the surplus and deficit policy allows the boards that are in a surplus situation to hold on to 50 per cent of that surplus. At one point all the money used to be returned to the department. Of course, there are a number of health authorities that are doing okay or holding surpluses. There are a few that are into a deficit, and the two major ones are Stanton and the Beaufort-Delta Health and Social Services Authority.

A serious question we have to address, even going forward, is: what is the expectation? Right now I think a lot of not only authorities but also people of the...

Mr. Speaker, obviously the Member is not hearing what I’m saying, or there’s something not connecting here because I believe I committed to working with the Members on the Infrastructure Acquisition Plan. In fact, it is a concern to us. That is why we’ve put an Infrastructure Cabinet Committee group together and are working with Members on the budget process, looking at timing, looking at how we bundle our projects together, and how they’re presented to the people of the Northwest Territories. We will work with committee on that. So yes, we are working with committee, and we’ll continue to do...

Mr. Chairman, geographic tracking processes are done by the department and the FMBS as well. That breakdown is territorial, regional, community; looking at service delivery, looking at all departments. As Members are aware, although it’s broken down, some of the pots of funding are held either in headquarters, even if it’s for regional dollars, or in the regional centres if it’s broken down for community dollars, depending on how it’s set up. If it’s application based…. If, for example, the jobs are put out but no one is applying, or the qualifications of those applying for jobs don’t meet the...

Mr. Chairman, to my right I have the secretary to the FMB, Ms. Kathleen LeClair, and to my left is Mr. Sandy Kalgutkar, director of budgeting and evaluation.