Jane Groenewegen

I’m wondering what incentive managers of health authorities have to live within their means and stay on budget. This sends a pretty big message for a deficit of this magnitude to be addressed with a straight bailout, so to speak. What incentive is there, then, for the authorities who have stayed within their budget or very close to it? What incentive is there for them to do that going forward, knowing that we can vote a $17 million budget item to address a deficit?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I move that we report progress for today.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will also be supporting this motion.

We have a chance to review departments on an annual basis, and it became abundantly clear that the Department of Aboriginal Affairs and Intergovernmental Relations does not put much emphasis or priority on having key players in the department who are aboriginal.

As a government we absolutely chastise the federal government all the time when they appoint people to various positions that have to do with the management of our lands and resources. We constantly say that we have good and qualified candidates who are Northerners, who are...

I look forward to hearing what the Premier finds out about that. It’s not just that they…. They have everything in place to retire: the pension, everything, all the numbers; they’ve reached the goals. But before they do that, they would like to know for sure that they could come back as a casual, because it’s important to their decision whether they retire or not. If that kind of thing could be accommodated, I think it could be a win-win for everyone.

When I look at private sector employers and even the federal government, they have a lot of opportunities for their employees to partake in different things, like transitional retirement, where instead of going from working five days a week to full retirement, they look at reducing their work week to four days a week and then down to three days a week and then they’re off on their retirement. There is an opportunity for people to work six-hour days instead of eight-hour days. There are all kinds of different opportunities available to people who have different lifestyles or different times of...

I’ll be happy to inform my constituents that they may be able to have some input into that consultation that will set those policies in place.

Mr. Speaker, under the current Business Development Fund process and in the upcoming SEED program, will it be possible for businesses to apply on a consecutive-years basis for those business development funds? Would it be possible for a business, for example, to apply every year and get those funds, or will there be something in the policy that will preclude that from happening?

I think the Minister is aware of the situation I brought to his attention, where one business is producing something in a community and getting business development funds to bring that product into Hay River to compete directly and head-on with existing businesses in Hay River. Now, this may be a bit of an anomaly, but it has happened. What could the Minister tell me to assure me that that type of thing would not be accepted — that it would be part of the application for the applicant to tell where they’re planning to market their product?

I don’t represent them all, but I’ve certainly seen them around a lot lately, and I want to thank them for the fine job they are doing, representing their constituents. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today I want to talk about how the market disruption policy is interpreted in the business development funding guidelines. Under the current policy, market disruption is said to occur when an investment by the government in a community impacts an existing business. Exceptions to this policy will only be considered if it can be demonstrated that a substantial portion of the market cannot be served by existing businesses, and that those existing businesses will not be seriously impacted by the proposed projects.

Recently a constituent who operates a small business informed...

The proposed Deferred Maintenance Program is billed under the work undertaken by the Risk Management and Assessment Program to identify critical maintenance deficiencies with the GNWT’s current infrastructure stock. The committee supports this initiative and sees it as an effective approach to managing future maintenance and energy costs and extending the life of these assets.

Public Works and Services provides water and sewer maintenance services on a contractual basis to several communities in the NWT which do not have trained personnel to carry out those services. Committee members would...