Floyd Roland

Yes, Mr. Chairman. I am here to introduce Bill 1, Supplementary Appropriation Act, No. 1, 2005-2006. This bill requests authority for additional appropriations of $21.342 million for operations expenditures and $32.002 million for capital investment expenditures in the 2005-06 fiscal year.

Major items included in this request for operations expenditures are as follows:

$16.1 million for the Department of Executive, Financial Management Board Secretariat, for the resources associated with the human resource amalgamation. Of this amount, $14.8 million was transferred from other departments;

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Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, the $400,000 will be contributed by the health authority. It comes out of a surplus that they have in their budget, and our retention policy with surplus is that the health board gets to keep 50 percent of it and the rest gets returned to us. So out of their surplus they are going to pay for the extra portion. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, the rules are as he’s read them and as I’ve worked with where transfer has occurred and adjustment has happened. What is happening at this point now is we’re requesting that transfer to happen and that adjustment to be made. The transfer has not happened at this point, adjustment has not happened at this point, the money is still identified under the Territorial Treatment Centre for Yellowknife, but changes to the plan are being brought forward now for the money to be changed to a different project. It’s the Territorial Treatment Centre, but in a...

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I move, seconded by the honourable Member for Thebacha, that Bill 1, Supplementary Appropriation Act, No. 1, 2005-2006, be read for the first time. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, the services that Ms. Lee has talked about as available here in Yellowknife are territorial services. So they are of the nature that is provided to all residents of the Territories, whether other communities have to travel here to see those specialists. That is a common occurrence within the Northwest Territories. The benefit of having the largest centre is that more services are available here and other residents from across the Territories have to travel here. So it’s a practice that is already done and exercised on a daily basis throughout the...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I think we just have to look back a couple of years at an incident that is very similar in the nature of what happened and it did, as well, cause an uproar in a number of other communities. When the young offenders’ facilities were moved from their existing location, they were identified in the capital plan and were to be possibly rebuilt in Hay River. At that point a decision was made by the department to proceed on a different lateral and saw the facilities being split and moved to other locations. The young offenders ended up being part of the...

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Madam Speaker, I think in this arena and on the floor of this House we would be silly to say that decisions made in this House were not political ones. That is the nature of the environment we are in and decisions are made based on departments bringing forward substantiation for it. As for changing the rules to only limit $500,000 for being lapsed or carried over and lapsing the rest, we’d find ourselves in the situation we are today. As the year ended, that money would have lapsed. We would have to come forward; the departments would have to come forward for...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Finally we agree. The scope in the project has changed and that is why we are coming back to this House for approval for that change. Up until that approval happens, the authority given to the Assembly remains with that project. The reason we're coming back now is because a request has been made and we've agreed at the first stage, but we need the authority of the Assembly to move beyond this next stage. If the Assembly does not approve of it, then the project, as the department is trying to put in place now, will not proceed until it receives approval of this...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, to try to make this a little more clear, we are bringing this before this Assembly for approval. This money needs to be approved if it’s going to proceed in that manner or, if it doesn’t get approved, then the department has to go back and identify where it would come up with those costs if it was going to proceed with that project. The money is still identified in the books still under the Territorial Treatment Centre, but the location will, if this goes to plan that has been discussed and approved at the first level and now needs approval by the...

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Madam Speaker, the budget as it's laid out and is brought before this House and voted upon gives the government the authority to spend the money on the projects identified. If those projects do not proceed in a timely fashion, then we come back to this Assembly and in the form of a supplementary appropriation to record the amount of capital carryovers for O and M money that was not used in the fiscal year it was identified and we request the carryover. That happens on an annual basis. One of the first bills we bring before this House in a supplementary document is...