Floyd Roland

Maybe the Member can answer for me where the nine months comes from. An agreement is signed April to March, so the funding is known for that year but the planning cycles may be somewhat different. So if I could get some clarification there, please.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It’s my pleasure to introduce today in the gallery Mr. Tom Williams who is not only a top goaltender for the Inuvik Ice Devils, but he’s also the chief operating officer for the Gwich’in Tribal Council.

---Applause

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, seeing that the NHL is officially off for the rest of the year, I would like to give an update of some of our own home-grown talent in the Northwest Territories.

Mr. Speaker, back in December, December 17th to the 19th, the First Nations Cup was held here in Yellowknife and Inuvik sent down a team into the masters division, which is I think a better name than old timers. I must say that the Inuvik Ice Devils showed remarkable gamesmanship and won the masters division and took home a fair bit of hardware as well, Mr. Speaker. I feel even better saying this...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I am aware that the Department of Municipal and Community Affairs is doing a review of community funding and how that’s structured. Once that work is done, we will look at what we can do as a government. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, as a government, for any agreement we enter into with other jurisdictions, other governments, municipalities, the transfer of funds with NGOs, we do enter into multi-year funding, but it is based on the fact that we have a cycle that we follow that every year has to be approved by the Legislative Assembly. So we can’t put an unconditional grant in place where for nine years they can do things or for three years. We have set up block funding agreements on a three-year basis with municipalities so they could do better planning, but that is also conditional...

Mr. Speaker, just to highlight some of the hardware we took home; besides taking home the championship trophy for the masters division we had the most valuable player, who was also the top goalie, our goalie, Mr. Tom Williams.

---Applause

He happens to be with us today. I shared the top defenseman with another player from a team locally.

---Laughter

So, Mr. Speaker, again congratulations to those boys, and we’re looking forward again to coming back and making a trip down to Yellowknife for the Balsillie Cup. Thank you.

---Applause

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, the amount we’ve identified here for going forward with this budget that’s before Members, $174,000 for travel includes, for example, superintendent’s travel to headquarters for the meetings that are required. As well, there is a new human resource assistant deputy minister and the traveling for the staff directly involved in that process. So we know there’s going to be that requirement and that’s why you don’t see the corresponding 25 percent reduction process, because we’ve added further responsibilities to this that were not there before and that’s...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, first of all, for the record, let's state that the accounting that took place of the loss as required by the Financial Administration Act was done so according to the Financial Administration Act, and through that supplementary document showed the loss as we have to account for it. So it was public, it was transparent. Just a portion of that was paid from within an appropriation amount we had within FMBS.

The other area; what we’re going to conclude here is the waivers to ensure that the receiver can go out now and make contact with other interested...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The review that’s ongoing is one that we’re doing from within FMBS. It’s ongoing now. At this time I’m not anticipating that we would change the work that’s going to include other work. What I did state was if Members of this Assembly felt that it was an area that we need to address and make that recommendation, then we would definitely look at that. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We can get that information for the Members. Again, the way it was budgeted for has changed since the actuals to the 2004-05 mains is what we built in for the year we’re in and we’re about the same as what we are planning for, expenditure wise, for this budget exercise here. Thank you.