Floyd Roland

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I’m pleased to present the 2008–2009 Main Estimates for the Department of Aboriginal Affairs and Intergovernmental Relations, incorporating feedback provided by standing committees.

The Department of Aboriginal Affairs and Intergovernmental Relations carries an important responsibility on behalf of the Government of the Northwest Territories. It is responsible for negotiating, implementing and monitoring land, resources and self-government agreements, including treaty land entitlements. It manages the GNWT’s relationship with the federal government and with provincial...

The transfer assignment position…. The home department is actually FMBS, and that is an affected position, so that person is working with their home department.

I’d have to get some clarity from the Minister of Human Resources, but my understanding of the process is that we’re looking at retirement. If individuals have set their dates, we have to work with, for example, Superannuation, because there are set dates when individuals can qualify. Working with them on potential earlier retirement for individuals that may be affected…. Once people are retired, I don’t see where we have any problems. Again, I’d have to defer to the Minister of Human Resources and get more detail on that. But for retirement and coming back as a casual, people call their...

Mr. Chairman, I believe the Member is referring to the lease commitment on page 2-103. That area is one where we pay the lease of the government office that is in Ottawa. It has been established there for a number of years. This is one of the areas where we are doing work within the Executive and DAAIR to see if we can change the way we do business in Ottawa and the need for that office. We’re looking at our options in that category. So it’s still there for now. This is our piece of it, of the actual lease of the space itself.

Flexibility is something we definitely need to look at in this area. For the record, though, we did respond to the committee on the specific changes we made within the budget documents before this Assembly, based on some of the recommendations the Members made. A number of the recommendations require that they go into the Refocusing Government initiative. So as we get through this phase, we’ll be putting the energy in, working with Members to see how we can implement those in the next budget cycle, as we’re starting to enter that process as well.

The area the Member has raised, the Donny Days...

Mr. Chairman, before I hand this off to the deputy minister, the fact is, as we go through the cycle, we’re working through HR with affected employees for the potential finding of other positions. Each department, in some cases, is working with individuals; with others, we’re waiting for this final process to be done before shifting of positions can happen.

But specifically within Aboriginal Affairs and Intergovernmental Relations, I’ll have Ms. Sparling give some detail.

Mr. Speaker, the process we’ve been involved with takes a lot of time with departments, Cabinet and Members. Once we’re through this budget process, we’ll be sitting down and putting energy to a lot of the initiatives we’ve talked about. This area will be one of those. In fact, I think we can send out a directive. The staff are getting and listening to this message that, as we prepare for the next level of reports, we have to see how we can barrel back some of those initiatives. We also have to recognize that not all communities are fully up to speed with the e-mail system and the technology...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I’m going to have to repeat what Minister Lee said yesterday. It’s not a matter that our positions are not needed and required in what we do but of making decisions of best serving the tables we’re at and the mandate we have.

We’ve come up with a balance where we’re at every table that is established, and we are meeting our mandate when it comes to, for example, implementation, because that’s a part of the funding through the federal government that we have to meet. We have been meeting those obligations.

Six of the 11 positions are vacant. I gave a list...

Again, for clarity, the fact is that some of these communities that have pursued initiatives have spent their own money on coming up with their plans and cost-benefit analyses and so on. We realize that in other communities, they don’t have that flexibility, so we’re ready through the Department of Transportation to look at an arrangement where we can help get to the next stage.

The fact is that when we talk about connecting to our actual highway system from communities, we know from our estimates, and we’ve been using these for quite some time…. It’s an estimate that at least starts the basis...

…Kam Lake, yes…

Laughter.