Robert C. McLeod

I can actually ask the Member that question in his former role, so I've got to be careful what I say here.

---Laughter

Our regional staff are all very involved in the Arctic Winter Games trials and the selection of athletes. It's actually a part of what they do and it’s part of what they believe in, supporting the athletes that are getting out there, so they would play a role in helping to organize trials and working to get athletes to the next level.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My understanding is that they do have local and regional trials, and if they make it through the regional trials, if they get to the territorial trials, usually there's some criteria in place. I think if there's an international trip like there is at this particular Arctic Winter Games, there's an expectation that they would have passport applications and the ability to access passports as well. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

We are working on the options now, and for me to say anything in here about those options would pre-empt our consultation with committee. We are going to have our meetings with committee and then through the business planning process, committee will have an opportunity for feedback to the government before we develop our main estimates for the May/June session. Committee will have an opportunity to see what some of the plans are for the upcoming budget. Then, during the business planning or the budget process, we have a number of different options in place as far as letting everyone know if...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, given the timing of the elections and the need to get our budget through, for this particular year our plan is to proceed with working with committee and we're hoping that we get a lot of feedback from the public through the Members of this Assembly. We've heard from a number of people their views on the budget, but given the timing of the election and our need to get the budget through, it was not in our plan to do an actual public consultation this year. However, that may change in the future when we have a bit more time to develop our business plan and...

I will follow up with Sport North and have a discussion with them as to the criteria that they use for the selection of their mission staff, and again, they are paying attention to the conversation that we're having in here today, so I'm sure that they will take steps to ensure that there's a greater regional balance and small community balance in the future.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, we have an agreement with Sport North that manages our games. They put a call out for advertisements in the paper for mission staff for the games that are coming up. Apparently, this year they had 80 applications, and they chose them. My understanding is they wanted to get a bit of a regional balance and that too, so that's the process that they use for the selection of mission staff.

In the last number of years we've had to use some short-term borrowing, usually beginning of the fall, as our expenditures continue to out-strip our revenues. This is not an option that we want to use too often. I mean, the option's there, we will take advantage of it, but our goal at the end of the day is to ensure that our expenditures don't exceed our revenue.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We will be tabling a revenue options paper early in this session that we had an opportunity to share with Committee, and it points out a number of options we're looking at as far as increasing our revenue.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I wish to table the following three documents entitled “Interim Estimates, 2016-2017”; “Supplementary Estimates (Infrastructure Expenditures), No. 4, 2015-2016”; and “Supplementary Estimates (Operations Expenditures), No. 3, 2015-2016.” Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I would have to have a discussion with Sport North. If you look at the names that came forward and the communities that they were from, I mean the Member's correct, there were a number of communities that weren't included in this. A lot of the folks chosen were from some of the regional centres. I can have that discussion with them and see if there are ways that we can include a lot of the smaller communities. They look at, as I said before, they want a regional-type balance, a gender balance, and they try to get as many people that have been involved in sports before. But I take the Member's...