Robert Hawkins

When we’re done, I’d like to go back to page 14, but I know we haven’t finished the page.

Mr. Chairman, the Finance Minister may be technically right, but in no case should we be funding capital projects, in my view, out of O&M money. It just sounds funny. When you go to read it up in the books to find out where the gymnasium is in a potential budget, you’re going to go to the capital budget.

The last thing I’ll say is that just because we do it this way and we’ve done it this way for a long time doesn’t mean it’s right. And just because we do it this way all the time, every time, we’re never going to get a different answer or a different process.

I think our process would be better...

Mr. Chairman, would the Minister of Justice be willing to provide the details of that charter scheduling stuff he talked about? It doesn’t sound like it would be that difficult, seeing how he said they typically take sched flights.

I’d like to know the details on how often they charter, how that works with timing, such as what days they flew in and flew out. I want to see that in comparison to the normal scheduled flights and how many tickets would have been considered at that time.

I will say that yes, probably in some cases, if you’re sending a plane full of people in and out, it probably...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I don't get fresh time on the clock, it appears.

First, as I said earlier, I just want reaffirm that I’m in support of the project. I'm just not supportive of the process of how we do this.

We're supporting a project by putting money into an O&M fund, and then we're allowing it to be transferred over to capital. And it just sounds like a funky or a wonky way of doing the process. We should be up front.

O&M should not be funding capital projects. The spirit and the intent of this all along is to ensure that the community of Nahanni Butte has a gymnasium. Again, I am in...

Well, I’m going to challenge the FMB Minister at this time by saying: when you’re a decision maker — and you are the decision maker, by the way, in this particular case — you don’t need the committee to tell you to think about something. I think it’s well within your authority to look at and evaluate the process. When we talk about stepping forward in our $135 million process of reductions and streamlining and course correction, this is a very simple process we could discuss. I guarantee you it wouldn’t cost $133,000.

I would ask the Minister, once again: would he take it back for further...

I wish to assure everyone that this is not a game by any standard. The fact is that this department seems to stonewall the approach of building up any relationship with these clients of aftercare. Mr. Speaker, I am sure we do better care with follow-up of our capital assets and taking care of them than we do with these clients after they receive treatment.

Do we have a process that we can engage today that would allow, and set it up in such a way, that these addiction treatment counsellors, once they are done a program with these clients, we can continue to follow up with them from time to time...

With good reason, the judges have an independent commission to review their salaries, and I stress “with good reason.” If I understand it correctly, it goes back to an act in 1998.

As I've explained to the Minister before, it seems as if we've hired the most expensive professionals to review the salaries of the most expensive professionals. Then we have to have someone to sit on both sides — who again is a very expensive consultant — to come up with a simple percentage. I don't belittle the actual salary, but it seems like a very expensive process to come up with a percentage just to say...

Well, I guess that if the Minister didn’t want to answer the question, she could have just said no.

Mr. Speaker, my next question — and I’m hoping to get a better answer out of this. I would also infer from the response in that letter that, if the client does not contact the referral service, there is no follow-up at the local level by the Mental Health Addictions counsellors. So the problem is, what is the Minister’s difficulty with the issue of the additions treatment folks contacting the client to ensure that there’s some follow-up? She seems to have some apprehension about it. What’s the...

Mr. Chairman, as I understand it, there is a Tourism Product Diversification and Marketing Program, I believe, in the range of $2.5 million. It has been reduced by approximately $2.1 million. I would just like to find out or have the FMB Minister put on record where that $2.1 million will show up or who is getting it or where it is going.

The Minister is correct in the sense that when you take the $43,000 and you take out the $14,000 for salary increases, you’re left with the $29,000. But the $29,000 divided by four judges and 12 months works out to almost precisely a $562 increase in insurance fees. I’m just trying to get a sense of…. I don’t know anybody’s insurance that costs $562 for life. This is an additional increase. I’m just trying to make sense of this. It’s difficult for me to go out there and look people in the eye and say, “Well, we’ve just bumped up the insurance for judges for another almost $562.”

I want to know...