I also ask exactly what can those dollars be used for. Is it simply travel, preparation, legal costs, whatever?
Thank you, Mr. Krutko. Mr. Roland.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The budget that’s being allocated for them is to help them in preparation for the negotiations and being involved in the direct negotiations that they would be included in. For example, the bilaterals or the overall preparation for main table discussions.
Can we get an idea of how many dollars have been allocated since the signing of the agreement-in-principle with these groups and what the terms of these dollars are? Is it up to December 31st or is it on an as needed basis?
Thank you, Mr. Krutko. Mr. Miltenberger.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The money that’s before us is to carry us to March 31st. The additional information that the Member has asked for, the more detailed information, we’ll commit to get that to the Member, to this committee.
Again I do have concerns with the words “implementation activities related to the devolution.” Usually you do the implementation after you have a final agreement so that you know what the final elements are of the agreement and then you do the implementation. I find it kind of odd that we’re funding an implementation of an agreement that isn’t final.
I’d like to know how much of these dollars are going to be expended for implementation. How much staff are we talking about to implement something that’s not final? Especially when we’re kind of tight in regard to the cash flow of this government and looking at the deficit situation we’re probably looking at in the 17th Assembly, I think there are better ways to spend this money than having to set something up that doesn’t really have an opportunity to do deal with it. Can I get a breakdown of what the implementation portion of these costs are and how many people we are talking about here?
We’ll commit to get that for committee.
Again, if we’re not able to get that information immediately, I suggest that we postpone this section of this bill and deal with it once we get the information from the Minister. Because I think to make a decision on spending $2.2 million, we should know exactly how it’s going to be expended and if we’re spending money on something that’s not going to take effect until future years, I think we have a real problem. Spending money on implementation of an agreement that is not even close to being finalized. More importantly, if you implement agreements after you have an agreement. It’s kind of odd we’re spending money on people and resources for something that’s not going to see the life of this government and more importantly having to hire people and yet we’re going to be laying people off in the next while.
There is detail provided in terms of where this money is going to be spent. The Member is asking what these are for. A lot of it is based on getting people in place to do the work tied to the negotiations or the implementation side. Pick some of the areas. Contaminated sites coordinators, the minerals devolution work. There’s going to be a whole range of activities that these folks do tied to either the actual negotiations or to implementation. The two are linked and often there’s going to be significant overlap tied to the workload at where we are at any particular time. The detail is here.
I would ask the Premier if he wants to add anything further, but in terms of the actual workload going forward will determine I think how that percentage of work is done between implementation and the actual negotiations.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Mr. Roland.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As the Finance Minister stated, he’ll get the additional information and provide that to Members. In our budget submission I believe we shared with committee a fair bit of that, but we’ll get the additional information.
More importantly, as was stated earlier by the Finance Minister in an earlier question around implementation, this isn’t the full implementation of working to implement the deal. This is preparation for implementation. The one thing we’ve learned, as the Minister has stated, from the Yukon experience -- and the Member knows this himself from his own work in negotiations -- there’s a big push for negotiations and when that’s done, it seems like everybody runs in a different direction and those that are left to implement find that it’s difficult to implement without that background in some of that work. That’s what we learned from the Yukon, is that as they signed their agreement, the implementation side were not really prepared for it and that took a lot of additional work. As we prepare for those, we’re also preparing for some of the challenges that we would need around implementation and making sure that we have the right information. If you negotiate a bad deal to begin with, implementation is going to be even worse. The Member is aware of that. We’ll get the additional information and provide the breakdown of the work and the percentages of the budget.
Thank you, Premier Roland. Mr. Krutko.
I, too, like my colleague Mr. Bromley, can’t support this on the basis of I don’t think we’re doing justice to the people of the Northwest Territories by going ahead and not having the resources to try to get people together and find resolution to this outstanding issue. I’ll leave it at that.
Thank you, Mr. Krutko. More of a comment. Next on my list is Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just had a quick question for the Minister. He mentioned a response to me earlier about how this will contribute to the public’s opportunity for participation in defining the northern management regime that some of these dollars will go to water management policies. I’d just like to ask him to expand on that and describe how that is planned, how these dollars are planned to be used through water management policies. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Minister Miltenberger.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. What I was referring to was some of the work we’ve done as an Assembly with regard to water, the Water Strategy, getting our thinking clear, the principles -- the policy was developed in full collaboration and support of the Aboriginal governments -- is going to inform a lot of the work going forward on devolution as it pertains to the water issue because we’ve taken the last four years of time to do that. It’s in forming our transboundary negotiations as well. That’s an example of some of the work that’s being done in anticipation of us in the Northwest Territories being able to take over that legal authority. If we waited until we had the Devolution Agreement signed and had no preparatory work done on water, we would be scrambling. People would be asking us what we’ve been doing and why aren’t we ready.
So in this case, the Assembly had the foresight to identify water as a priority and we’ve worked very hard to move that forward. It’s paying dividends today both in terms of the process we’ve developed with the Aboriginal governments and the public government, but also with the product. This is going to be a very important foundation piece for that piece tied to water in the AIP negotiations.
I appreciate the Minister saying much more eloquently than I can why we need to do this public consultation of the land and resource management regime as this Minister has had the foresight to do on the issue of water. I think he’s eloquently made my point. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. No question, more of a comment. We are on page 3, Supplementary Estimates (Operations Expenditures), No. 2, 2011-2012, Executive, operations expenditures, executive operations, not previously authorized, $2.296 million.
Agreed.
Total department, not previously authorized, $2.296 million.
Agreed.
Human Resources, operations expenditures, directorate, not previously authorized, $49,000.
Agreed.
Total department, not previously authorized, $49,000.
Agreed.
Page 5, Public Works and Services, operations expenditures, asset management, not previously authorized, $45,000.
Agreed.
Total department, not previously authorized, $45,000.
Agreed.
Page 6, Health and Social Services, operations expenditures, health services programs, not previously authorized, $4.910 million.
Agreed.
Total department, not previously authorized, $4.910 million.
Agreed.
Page 7, Education, Culture and Employment, education and culture, not previously authorized, negative $254,000.
Agreed.
Total department, not previously authorized, negative $254,000.
Agreed.
Transportation on page 8, operations expenditures, corporate services. Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I do have some questions on this page. I note that we had $1.85 million made available from the federal government for research on climate change and associated development projects. Could I ask the Minister will we be using or will we have access to all of these dollars by year end or have we lost some of those dollars? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Minister Miltenberger.
Yes, Mr. Chairman, we will have access to the money that’s available.
My understanding is we will be using about $700,000-and-some in the remainder in this fiscal year. I just want to be sure that that’s correct and ask what the expenditures were from this $1.85 million in the previous two fiscal years. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Mr. Kalgutkar.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yes, the Member is right. The revised budget for 2011-12 year is $791,000. That’s based on the $527,000 carried forward from 2010-11 and the $264,000 that was in the department’s budget. Some of the projects that were completed in the previous year include a planning study for an access road to the Willow River gravel source in Aklavik; a vulnerability assessment of Highway No. 3; planning for a highway adaption to climate change in permafrost; a climate change adaption risk assessment workshop; and runway vulnerability protocols for some of the runways.
Some of the work planned for 2011-12 include comprehensive stakeholder discussions with the community governments; workshops addressing the impacts of climate change on ferry operations; completion of the DOT Climate Change Adaption Plan; further development on runway vulnerability protocols; monitoring the performance of the highway to source 177. So those are some of the activities that are happening in 2011-12. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Kalgutkar. Mr. Bromley, are you good? Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just to confirm, the work done in the past, it would amount to about $1.1 million. Is that correct?
That’s my understanding, yes.
I guess my one complaint is that we’ve had two years of expenditures and I heard absolutely nothing back on what those things were spent on and the results of the research and development. So I’d like to just register that complaint with the Minister and have him work with his colleagues to remedy that, hopefully on a routine basis.
My concern about this funding, of course, is that given the climate change ultimately involves everything, it would be very easy for these dollars to be spent on other things and claim to be spent on climate change. I consider the list we’ve heard to include one or two elements of that nature. That’s why I think this needs some ongoing oversight and reporting accountability. So that’s just a comment. Thank you.
