Paul Delorey

Mr. Chairman, most of that comes from pension expenses and an increase to constituency budgets. If we want to get some further detail on that, we’ll ask Mr. Lovely to expand on that.

Yes, we will. Of course, all these issues are considered at the Board of Management level and through the Clerk’s Office. We will keep the Member informed as to where we plan on going with this.

As Members know, the area out front that we’re talking about, for the road going around the loop and even the parking lot for that matter…. When it was built, they did it to disturb as little of the environment out there as they possibly could. The road is really narrow. We’re still dealing with the swamp area out there regardless of what we do. The engineers have actually suggested we may widen that area, but it would be more or less for road stabilization — to try to maintain a half-decent road out there. We still want to be very conscious. I don’t think the mentality on what we do out front...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Yes, this issue has been brought up a number of times, and it’s one we continue to struggle with.

There had been a proposal a few years ago to put in an extra 21 parking stalls out front. We had budgeted approximately $140,000 to do that. When we got an estimate to do those parking stalls, it was considerably higher than that, plus the fact that it was late in the fall when the bids came in.

At the same time, there was talk about a courthouse building being built on the precinct here. We wanted to make sure, when we did it, that it was going to be compatible with...

We have not got the numbers for the performance of the fund to put in for ’08–09 yet, so we’re depending on past years.

Mr. Chairman, it’s something we will look at. There’s no legislative requirement for them to resign if they do move right now, so maybe even to put a clause like that in there we may need some legislative change. It’s certainly something we can keep in mind, and wherever we can fill those positions with Northerners, it’s something we want to look at.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. With me today I have, to my left, Olin Lovely, director of corporate services; and to my right, Mr. Tim Mercer, Clerk of the Assembly.

The residency issue is one where we do our best, in our statutory officers especially, to have Northerners in those positions where we can. As far as residency for certain positions, there’s no requirement to have that. However, we would like to do that.

There are some positions in our statutory officers that sometimes we prefer to have outside the Territories, or it makes more sense to have them outside the Territories, strictly because of conflict-of-interest issues. However, with the Languages Commissioner, when she was appointed for a four-year term, she was a resident of the North. Her...

I also want to thank Brian Thagard, Donna Friesen, Lynda Comerford, Derek Edjericon and Bryn Herbert for coordinating and implementing this great new initiative.

Mr. Chairman, that concludes my opening remarks. I will now be happy to answer any questions you may have.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. There was an error in your papers on the number of positions. That paper shows the Chief Electoral Officer as being a member of the public service, and it’s actually a contracted position. That number should read 28 instead of 29. On page 1-24 it should be two instead of three.