Wendy Bisaro

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just have a couple of questions here. Mr. Moses has already referenced the increase to the Native Women’s Association and to the Status of Women Council of the NWT. I’m glad to see that a couple of organizations which do work outside of government have been given an increase. I gather that it’s up to each organization within each department to kind of scream and holler for money, and that’s unfortunate. I would urge the Minister, as Premier, to look across government and maybe set something in place so that organizations are evaluated more often than every five years...

Thanks to the deputy minister for the answer. I wanted to lastly ask about succession planning. We know that we have a large number of our fairly senior staff who are going to be leaving the employ of the GNWT due to retirement over the next five to 10 years, and I believe that in the last year or so we’ve heard from the Department of HR that they are working on succession planning.

I would like to know how they assist various departments in this succession planning, and I think there are one or two initiatives that are out there. How are those initiatives working? Do you feel that there’s been...

Thank you, Madam Chair. I want to just follow up a bit from where I left off yesterday. I had asked about a retention strategy. The answer that I got from Ms. Desjardins talked a lot about recruitment but didn’t talk much about retention. So I’d like to ask again, what are we doing? Do we have a retention strategy, was my first question, and what are we doing to retain employees? What retention efforts are we putting in place? Thank you.

Thanks to the Premier for that, and I think those are all good things. Providing housing and providing office space is definitely a good thing.

I’d like to ask the Premier if he has considered the recent actions of Nunavut, that they are reverting from decentralization back to centralizing some of their programs and services and people in Iqaluit. Have we as a government taken a look at why their decentralization did not work or are we blindly going down the same path?

Thanks, Mr. Chair. Just a question here. I note from the ’14-15 Main Estimates to the ’15-16 Main Estimates the amounts are pretty similar but the revised estimates for ’14-15 went up some $200,000 or so. Could I get an explanation as to why the revised mains are so much higher and why we’ve gone back down to a lower number for the start of this budget? Thank you.

I challenge the Premier to prove to me that we are improving the efficiency of programs and services when we remove long-standing employees from the position where they have become quite proficient.

To the Premier, I’d like to know what analysis has been done of the actions taken with regard to decentralization to date. What are the results from, I think it’s phase one and phase two that we’ve completed at this point of the decentralization plan? How many positions were vacant? How many were vacant or new positions? How many employees did we lose? How many employees left the NWT taking our $25...

Thanks to the Premier for that information. Just one last question. I’d like to ask about negotiations with both the federal government and Lutselk'e Dene Band in and around the Thaidene Nene National Park. Where do we stand as the GNWT? What is our role in these negotiations? Can I get some kind of a status report on where the negotiations are at? Are they at a standstill? Are they moving forward? Are they going backwards? We haven’t heard anything about it for quite some time.

It’s a completely different situation if the position being moved is vacant or a new position. In that case, there are no people to be uprooted, no families thrown into turmoil. That should be the government’s thinking. It can be like reducing staff costs through attrition. The only positions that should be considered for decentralization should be those which are vacant or new positions.

I will have questions for the Premier at the appropriate time.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just a couple of questions here. In terms of negotiations and the number of tables that we’re at and where we’re going in terms of progress or not, has there been an increase in the activity in and around negotiations and under this particular activity?

Thanks to the Minister for that. I’m glad the government is continuing to fight against the federal government on this particular situation. It is going to have a very large impact on our finances if we don’t get some solution to where the federal government wants to go and where we feel we need to go. Just a comment. I urge the Minister and his department to keep fighting the federal government on this Fiscal Harmonization Initiative. Thank you.