Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, it is, as we stated, a concern and the issue of capacity is a big one. As we’re seeing potentially, we feel that as part of the impact on the competition side. Over the North overall is there capacity to do these projects in all of our communities in the time we have set out? If you look at the request for carry-overs plus the 2007-2008 budget we’ve just passed, the capital program we have sitting out there now is just under $250 million. That’s a significant amount of work that would be required in a year, so one of the exercises that we go through in the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, in celebration of National Nurses Week from May 7th to 13th, I would like to acknowledge the tireless contributions made to the residents of the NWT by our nurses.

This year’s theme, Think You Know Nursing? Take a Closer Look, focuses on the expanded roles of nurses as leaders, innovators, pioneers, primary care providers, mentors, educators, researchers and administrators.

Mr. Speaker, the nursing shortage being experienced across Canada is also a reality here in the NWT. We are addressing this by training our own northern workforce through a four-year...

Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, we’ve noticed that on a lot of our projects in the Northwest Territories and our larger capital projects, we are at times receiving one bidder on a tender package. That can be some of the larger ones. Even in the city of Yellowknife, which is our largest community, we may get two bidders on some of our larger projects. That affects the way we can look at things. If we’re going out for competition and finding there’s little competition and there’s one price, what do we do if it’s, for example, twice the amount that was established in the budget? So we’re...

Thank you, Madam Chair. Joining me at the table here to my left is the director of budget management evaluation, Mr. Sandy Kalgutkar, and to my right is the manager of budget development evaluation, Mr. Charles Tolley. Thank you.

Yes, Madam Chair. Supplementary Appropriation Act, No. 1, 2007-2008 requests authority for additional appropriations of $58.169 million for operations expenditures and $78.898 million for capital investment expenditures in the 2007-2008 fiscal year.

The request for operations expenditures includes $14.037 million for investments in new initiatives for priorities identified during the 2007-2010 business planning process. Major items include:

$5.5 million to support initiatives identified in the GNWT energy plan and Greenhouse Gas Strategy. Of this amount, $2.4 million will be funded from the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I move, seconded by the honourable Member for Weledeh, that Bill 8, Supplementary Appropriation Act, No. 1, 2007-2008, be read for the first time. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, we work with the Department of Human Resources on our recruitment and retention side closely. They have some dedicated staff that work with us. We do, internally, as well, within the department of working towards what we can do and that example I gave earlier about going to colleges, universities, along with our own recruitment practice we have with our own Nurse Graduate Program. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I don’t have the vacancies that we have across all the health authorities on me at this moment; I can get that information. What we have done, for example, in trying to address this, is we’ve worked with authorities on how we’re going to use agency nurses. There is a shortage yet; we still will use them from time to time, but what we’ve worked with authorities on is the fact that if agency nurses are going to be used, it is to ensure that our facilities stay open, not to do a top-up, as was happening in a number of stations. We continue to work around...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. First and foremost, we have to make it clear that within the Department of Finance we have no control over what the industry does in this area. The only place our government has an impact is in POL, or petroleum products division within Public Works and Services where we supply to communities where there is no private sector. Here in the North, the rest of the communities, the only impact we have is on the fuel tax side. That hasn’t changed, but I will request the department go back and look at the changes and then we’ll have to send an inquiry into some of the bulk...

Thank you, Madam Chair. As we’ve heard numerous times in this House the concern about position growth. Within FMB one of things that we send back to departments as we begin any budget preparation is growth and positions would be looked in a serious manner. We then deal with the request being brought before us.

Health care facilities and boards are a challenge. We have provided information to committee members. The deficits aren’t always climbing; there are fluctuations. We have some health boards in a surplus situation. Some are right on the line. From time to time, there are some that are...