Floyd Roland

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The Member has raised this issue on a number of occasions now and probably won’t be satisfied with the responses he gets today that I have tried to supply information about where we are and the process used. There are a few key things that have impacted where we can go as a Financial Management Board and our involvement. One is the original agreements that were put in place and who would be parties to those discussions. The process, as laid out, is the government was involved on the front end to see if a producer or a company could be looked at satisfactorily and...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, the policy wording itself isn’t as specific to say Yellowknife base rate, that we can compare it to the rates that are set up by the PUB. We’ve been interpreting it through FMBS as being the Yellowknife rate. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, the Public Service Act that we are going to be going forward with is going to follow on the heels of the human resource service centres' work. Once we have that piece of work done, then we can begin to focus on that. This is one of the high priorities that we hold. As we move forward with that, we are going to need to sit down with committee members to see where we want to see our public service go and how we proceed down the road that is acceptable to Members of the Assembly. It’s early and we need to sit down and have that discussion, but it will...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, the first thing we need to do is to calculate the total losses of the situation we’re in right now. Again, a fair bit depends on what the receiver can come together with in the sense of another deal. Once we have those numbers and things proceed, we will be able to calculate the total amount that we will have to come forward to this House and seek approval for. That would come through a supplementary appropriation, as we have not booked that within our budget at this time. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, the program, as it’s laid out, is based on Yellowknife rates, so those that receive the subsidy would be paying higher than the Yellowknife rate and that is the program and we’ll stay on that. The changes in dealing with the rate rider will work on the same principle. If we find, for example, the Yellowknife base rate goes up, then so will everybody else’s rate go up accordingly, because Yellowknife, again, is used as the base rate and if it goes up then the subsidy will kick in from that rate up. So the rest of the residents of the North will feel, if...

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.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I believe this exercise we’re doing is about making sure that we’re doing the job right. That’s the first stage we were involved in, in a sense, is getting the mechanics right. Making sure that the organization, the design job descriptions are fitting and able to work well. Then as we go through that and develop that, the second phase of that would be the policy end, how things need to work together and get that end together. That’s definitely where we’re going to be needing the input of Members, to ensure that we’re on the right footing as we go forward.

I believe that...