Wendy Bisaro

Mr. Chair, okay, I think it’s as clear as mud. So really the $1.4 million more in this year’s estimates is a bit of smoke and mirrors. Really the addition is whatever number Mr. Devitt just gave me, which has gone out of my head already.

I’d like to know from the Minister, with looking at this $1.4 million that the Minister says is like new money, how are we using the $1 million that has been carried over from the 2012-13 revised mains. The money that the committee added to the budget last year, the $1 million or $1.25 million, how is that being used in this budget? Is it being used in the same...

Thanks for the information. So this Small Community Employment Fund, my understanding is that was established by one of the special committees during the 16th Assembly and I think this committee was revived in the 17th. Was this re-profiling of this $400,000 something that the Rural and Remote committee was aware of? Were they consulted before the decision was made to re-profile the money?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just have to go back to my issue with heritage and projects. Maybe it’s just the way that it’s written, but if I look on page 10-20, the NWT Arts Council gives contributions to artists and cultural groups – okay, that might include heritage – but then it goes on to say to encourage creative artistic projects in visual literary performing and new media arts in the NWT. I would think that a heritage organization is not likely to want to do a creative artistic project.

I again would have to stress to the Minister that I don’t see much opportunity in here for a heritage...

Mr. Chair, I don’t think I quite understood that. If we are comparing mains to mains, we had the mains for 2012-13 that were a dollar, say. We have the mains for 2013-14 that are $1.4 million plus one dollar more, so we added after the revised mains from 2012-13 were $1.25 million bigger, from what I understand. Can I get that clarified? Are the revised mains numbers from 2012-13 $1.25 million at least higher in terms of education than the 2012-13 mains for education? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I’m done.

I guess I should ask why there’s no TSC chargebacks.

That’s good.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have a number of questions in this section. I’d like to start with culture and heritage. I spoke last week about a request from a number of heritage groups in the NWT to the Minister to provide a bit more of a focus on heritage. The Minister, I think, sort of suggested that we do stuff for culture, and I’m not saying that we don’t. Or for heritage, I should say. There is a portion under this section of Education… Oh, sorry. We’re not on that page yet, are we? We’re on page 13. Right, Mr. Chair?

Mr. Chair, I appreciate that commitment and I look forward to seeing the information.

My last question here has to do with a statement in the Minister’s remarks. It had to do with the Aurora College housing. We are closing down the unit. There are savings realized by PWS from closing the existing units. It then says that the savings from PWS will be used to fund a portion of the department’s main estimates. I found that very confusing. Could I get an explanation of what is going on here? Are we transferring money from PWS to Education or what? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just one question here. Mr. Bromley brought my eyes to the line that says other. I complained bitterly in the 16th that we had amounts in other that weren’t explained anywhere, and I just wondered. I thought we’d gotten rid of all of those. I’d like to know from the department what the $258,000 under other is for and why we don’t have an explanation for it on this page.