Jane Groenewegen

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I understand that this allocation is to address the various deficits in the operating budgets of some of the health authorities. Several are in financial deficit; several are not. This is not a new happening. This is something that has been happening with health authorities for a number of years.

In the past there was some level of participation sought from health authorities when they were in deficits to work with the government in terms of a recovery plan. I can think of one time when the health authority was expected to work with the government to come up with 50 per...

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...

The Committee wishes to proceed with the Main Estimates for the Department of Aboriginal Affairs and Intergovernmental Relations and, depending on how that goes time-wise, proceed to the Department of Public Works and Services.

Mr. Speaker, I’m not hearing that we actually do have a lot of flexibility to do some of those things, so that is a discussion I would like this government to embark on with the union. I really do believe there could be cost savings, and it could be a win-win situation for everyone.

I have a situation in my constituency, for example, where a person wants to retire, but they want to know that they can come back as a casual. Why can’t that kind of thing be facilitated?

Mr. Speaker, my questions are for either the Premier or the Minister of Human Resources. We as a government, as everybody knows, have been looking at ways to save money. The Regular Members got together and came up with a list of potential reductions. We submitted that to Cabinet. As yet, we have not had a formal response back to that, because we were told that those would require some analysis.

I would like to know what kind of flexibility we have. Everybody knows that during the 13th Assembly we came up with something called Donny Days, where non-essential service providers were given the...

Mr. Speaker, since we’re on the verge of a new SEED fund and setting up policies to go with that, would the Minister commit to undertake to ensure that if someone is applying for that funding to operate a business, which they then plan to operate on a regional basis, you would ensure that regional activity would not be impacting on existing businesses competing with them, causing market disruption?

Mr. Speaker, in my Member’s statement today I talked about the way in which the market disruption policy was interpreted when approving applications for business development funding. I’d like to ask the Minister responsible for Industry, Tourism and Investment what process his department uses to assess the potential for market disruptions when they’re receiving and reviewing funding applications.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to represent all of the members of the UNW.

Interjection.

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...