Michael Miltenberger

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the Member’s assessment, her bottom line assessment that at the end of the day it was a good decision to put the $20 million to offset the rates. The intent was not to make Members look bad. The intent was to deal with a pressing issue that was going to put all of our constituents under needless or extra financial burden at a time when we’re all struggling with how do we deal with the cost of living. We do place great value on protocols. We spend an enormous amount of time when we do business on process, making sure we’ve touched every base that needs to...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Once the start-up is over, the anticipation is that it would become a part of the regular budgeting process and not necessarily through the supplementary appropriation process.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. In regards to the first issue raised by the Member, we provide weekly updates to MLAs during fire season and we will add a financial component to that to allow Members to track, as do we, the costs and expenditures during fire season.

In regard to the second issue, I want to, of course, concur with the Member that Northerners have reacted very favourably to the $20 million that was used to offset the proposed rate increase, and the reason that we did $20 million - $15 for the rest of this fiscal year, $5 million to carry us over to June – is because we had to give the...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. The Member is correct in this case. Building season and the school year got way ahead of the legislative and budgetary process that we run and we are currently in. So the Member is correct. There were commitments made. There was a need to be ready and so the work was, certainly in these instances, done, contrary to what the law of general application for supplementary appropriations and getting approval before you spend the money, in order to meet the program needs, as the Member alluded to. Thank you.

Yes, Mr. Chair. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. It’s new money. Thank you.

I’d like to add a bit more information before we get to that conclusion the Member has made.

It takes time for departments to address issues that arise from an audit. For example, all the recommendations from 2011-12 audits are now complete, while only 62 percent of the recommendations of the 2012-13 audits are currently considered complete. These things take time. Some of them are more complex and stretch out a little bit longer.

Audit reports, recommendations and follow-up are internal management documents. In that regard, the GNWT follows a standard set out by the Institute of Internal...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. There have been the required discussions about the issue that the Member raises, and if the money is not voted on or approved, then the department will be having to absorb those costs from their existing budget. But it’s clear to all parties here that this is not the process that we have laid out to be followed. We have the issues before the House that have been identified by the Members and it’s been dealt with entirely within the government and now we’re here having judgment passed on this request. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The audit committee approved 12 audit projects in 2013-14 based on the audit risk assessment methodology which is used to identify or determine systemic risks inherent in government programs and services associated with governance framework, internal audits and…(inaudible)… independent oversights. Eight of the approved 12 projects were assessed as being ready for audit by the Audit Bureau in 2013. Four of the proposed 12 projects were deferred based on management feedback. In some cases, new business processes were being designed and that required time to be implemented...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just want to assure the Member here, Ms. Bisaro, that we’re fully invested in the process of consensus government. I can tell you that the last six months I have felt at times like she says she is feeling now, is day after day that we would be constantly bombarded with rising costs with all the fires and the impact and the huge amount of territory that was burned and the communities that were at risk and knowing that we had to spend the money. So we did that. I said at the time, this is not the time to argue about money. It’s not the time to worry about where the...