Glen Abernethy

When I was responding to Mr. Bromley, I would say that we would take it to committee. It would have to be considered by everybody, reviewed by everybody. Thank you.

The Department of Executive has a committee that’s working on the devolution issues with respect to where positions may go. With respect to devolution in general and bringing in employees, we are there to provide guidance and direction with respect to Human Resources policy. We don’t have additional money in our budget to do that. We are doing it out of Human Resources strategy and policy with the resources we currently have.

The problem, as I see it, is there is currently nobody in the business of providing pellets in the Sahtu at this point, but I agree with the Member. In his comments, he kind of answered the question for me. As we are a client, we increase demand and, therefore, increase affordability and make it easier for others. But there still has to be a supply source. We’re not a distributor. We would be a client. If it’s there, it certainly increases our options.

This is an important program. I share the Member’s opinion and thoughts. It’s going to be an e-training curriculum. It’s going to be on line. That way the greatest number of GNWT employees and respective GNWT employees can access and start gaining the awareness that they need of the different cultures and realities in the Northwest Territories.

I understand the Member’s point, as well, about getting out with members of the communities, getting into communities, and I as a Minister have committed to getting to those communities and bringing some of my staff with me on a regular basis. I know the...

I’m not sure I understand what the Member means by that.

Thank you, Madam Chair. If I understand correctly, the Member is asking about bilingual bonuses that employees can get. That comes out of each individual department out of their compensation and benefits section. So it will show up in every department under compensation and benefits. It’s not broken out specifically because the number changes fairly regularly as people come in that are receiving the bonus, but it all comes out of individual departments’ compensation and benefits.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I’ll just touch on a few of these areas and then we can get into some details where I can answer some specific questions.

With respect to Mr. Yakeleya’s comments about the high cost of energy in the communities, we see that and we recognize that, which is one of the reasons with public infrastructure we have been looking at alternatives and we have been using the Capital Asset Retro Fund to help us deal with those things. I acknowledge that we haven’t gone to any alternatives necessarily in the Sahtu with respect to heating, but we have been working in the Sahtu. One...

Duly noted. With respect to data, we need the data to do the evaluation, so it is important that we continue to pull the data.

Later on when we get to page 7-26, there’s a complete, comprehensive list of projections and previous year estimates and actuals from ‘10-11 on all the dollars that came in from all of the departments, boards and agencies and the government services into the TSC. That money goes into the TSC to evergreen, to cover the cost of providing the services and all of those types of things. I might be missing something so I’ll go to Ms. Gault to see if there’s anything to add.

That’s correct.