Paul Delorey

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.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I’m pleased to present the 2008–2009 estimates for the Legislative Assembly.

As Members know, the Assembly’s Main Estimates are drafted and considered by the Board of Management as opposed to the Financial Management Board. As an independent branch of government, the Legislative Assembly is not bound to implement the fiscal policy of the government with respect to planned expenditure reductions. This being said, it has been the practice of the board in recent years to make every possible effort to implement expenditure reductions for the Assembly when these have been...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I don’t know if there’s been any formal discussion on it yet. I know that the Chief Electoral Officer is an area that, now that the elections are over with, is going to do some investigating on and working with MACA and the possibility of doing that.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Yes, we’re eliminating one position. However, we’re adding a new finance administration clerk position, so that offsets the position. That’s why the total employees is the same.

Legislative Assembly, Activity Summary, Office of the Clerk, Active Positions, information item (page 1-14), approved.

Again, we can look at that. Our main concern is to have some stability in the roadway out there and address the parking problem that we have, probably through adding some extra parking to the lot. That’s certainly one thing we could look at — whether just widening the base out there would help us out with parking when there is a major event here. So we will look at that.

It was money we were going to use from within anyway, and that money has lapsed. We do have a fund of $75,000 that we use for minor repairs out front just to try to keep up with the situation of our roadway and parking lot. Quite obviously, we’re going to have to get approval for a bigger expenditure if we want to do it half-decently out there.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. That is an issue we have been dealing with for some time now: trying to reduce the energy costs for the Assembly and keeping in mind, as well, the environment.

We have introduced some initiatives here to cut down on costs, such as lighting. Specifically to the fuel, there has been a proposal put forward for pellet heat for the building. We are looking into some of the costs involved in that, and not only that but location for the ability to put in a hopper that would serve that type of system. It’s actively being looked at to try and come up with some costs and to find...