Kevin O'Reilly

Merci, Monsieur le President. My questions are for the Minister of Aboriginal Affairs and Intergovernmental Relations. On January 31st of this year, I submitted a written question on the costs of the November 2016 Cabinet trip to Ottawa. As part of that question, I asked for costs of lobbyist support, including contracted services. The Minister responded by stating, "No lobbyists or consultants were engaged in the planning or coordination of this trip."

The third quarter report on GNWT solesource contracting shows that, between April 1st and December 31, 2016, we retained Earnscliffe Strategy...

Thanks, Mr. Chair. So it sounds like this is part of the fiscal reduction targets set for the department. Can we just have a little bit more information about what these individuals do? Do they support community governments? It says "community planning," so I know maybe this isn't the right place, but are these people within MACA who, say, review land use planning bylaw changes, zoning changes that have to go to MACA for approval? Some more detail on what the functions are of the positions that are being cut would be helpful. Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Merci, Monsieur le President.

The committee thanks everyone who contributed their time and effort to our review of the Members’ Conduct Guidelines and associated legislation. Your feedback was of great help in our deliberations. Your specific advice as well as the spirit and intent behind it is much appreciated. Members thank Mr. Lawrence Norbert for suggesting the title of this report, which is derived from his original in Gwich’in.

Members of the committee carefully studied all submissions and the relevant experience of other jurisdictions before making the recommendations in this report...

Thanks, Mr. Chair. I am looking at page 315. The line item is community planning. There seems to be a catastrophic drop-off of funding for this line from $421,000 in 2015-16 to $54,000 in the budget next year. Can someone explain to me why there is this ongoing reduction under the community planning function for MACA? Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Merci, Monsieur le President. This past weekend I had the pleasure of playing hockey on the ice surface at the new Ko Gocho Complex in Behchoko. The WIMPs, or Weekly Improvement for Mediocre Players league, was invited to play a game on the new ice surface on Saturday evening with a team of young players from Behchoko. Special thanks to Dolphus Nitsiza and Chris Hunt for organizing the game. The WIMPS have been around since the early 1980s, and I am proud to say that I have been playing with them for 30 years. Yes, after 30 years I can still occasionally push the puck into the net, but more...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I am looking at the same page, 254. I see that we collected a whopping $4,000 for access to information and protection of privacy fees. I know this was an issue that was posed in the discussion paper that came from our government recently, but why do we even bother, because I am sure the administrative costs of collecting the money is probably even greater than $4,000. Is this something that the Minister is looking at in terms of updating the act and working towards more open government? Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. I believe this is where the rental office is located, in the Department of Justice. There has been some discussion in this House about the backlog of cases there, and it does not look like there is any additional funding for the rental office in next year's budget. In fact, it has actually been declining over time, if you go back to 201516. What is the plan to deal with this backlog, if we are not actually going to increase the funding for this function? Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. So, I don't believe the Minister has been able to present any hard evidence, facts, figures to support the earlier statement around reduced level of activity. He is got anecdotal information about perhaps there is less spending on mineral exploration, but the facts are there are still lots of water licences, land use permits, leases out there that do require inspections. There is no evidence that that activity has diminished in any way.

Let's go on a little bit further now into this risk matrix that the Minister has spoken about. Can he just provide a little bit more...

Thanks, Mr. Chair. That is helpful, but I guess I want to know at the end of the day who decides what goes into the mains. Presumably it is the Finance Minister, or FMB, and is the OROGO budget then submitted to FMB for approval to go into the mains or is it completely independent, they get to submit whatever budget they want? Who makes the final decision on the OROGO -- ultimately it comes here, but before who decides what is going to go into the mains for OROGO? Is that an FMB decision? Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. So can we actually anticipate any costs savings then? I think, from what I can recall, you had forecast expending $200,000, more or less, this year compared to last year, so is that really going to happen? Thanks, Mr. Chair.