Michael Miltenberger

Thank you. It’s a bigger issue than just the devolution positions we have as we’ve discussed at some length in this Assembly, a significant number of vacancies, about half in Yellowknife, half outside of Yellowknife and in the smaller communities, one of the biggest impediments to staffing hard to staff positions has been the lack of adequate housing. So we, as a government, have come up with a plan and the Assembly is going to be voting on this to put $22 million, roughly, over three years into housing in the small communities to address that need. In the other larger communities, the...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I am gratified to hear that the majority of Members see value to this type of operation. We are a corporation of $1.6 billion. We have over 5,000 employees. We have literally thousands of programs running all over the Northwest Territories, big communities, small communities in every conceivable service area, health, education, roads, housing, intergovernmental relations, you name it. No body this size, this complex can really consider itself to be functional because it doesn’t have the ability to have some type of evaluative function and efficiency function and review...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The intention is to have it brought into the House for first reading in October. Thank you.

Mr. Chair, it has to do, and will continue to do, both its taking on more responsibility as it comes over to under the direct supervision in the Department of Finance. The program effectiveness, efficiencies are going to be critical pieces. We’re hard at work. One of the projects under refocusing government, for example, is also we are continuing to work away at red tape. We are getting requests from other departments to have programs reviewed, agencies reviewed for the effectiveness, organizational design, efficiencies. That work will continue. We are asked to review and are assisting...

At this point they’re mainly administrative in nature. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. No, we’re still looking at a completion date of the second quarter of 2016. We’re just in the process of going through the candidates that applied and made the cut through the request for proposals. Thank you.

Yes, Mr. Chairman, I will provide that information.

Mr. Chairman, we could have the discussion about committing to dedicating this money, these profits will go into Health and Social Services budget. Out of that 25, X amount of it will go to whatever programs you can cover off. We can say we will coffer this money and it will go directly into those budgets in its entirety. Not a fraction, but we will put it into that area as a sign that we want this specifically streamed that way.

It’s something for the Member to consider. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The way this payroll tax is structured, from my understanding, once you make a certain amount of money you don’t get any of that back. So we’re, in fact, going to be raising the taxes on intended consequence, the way our tax structure is. It may hit some of the fly-in/fly-out folks, but it will hit even to a greater degree a percentage of our own population, not to mention the fact, of course, that the amount of money we have to pay back will go up, as well, as we collect those taxes. Thank you.

Yes, Mr. Chairman.