Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions follow up on my Member’s statement earlier today with questions to the Minister of Finance. Obviously, not every employee travels. The $7,000 per person is an average travel cost across the entire government, but for every employee who never travels, there is another average employee spending double that, or $14,000, and every one of them has a boss who is signing a travel authorization.
Does the process for putting forward an approval request for travel include the requirement to demonstrate that alternatives to travel have been considered and found impractical? Mahsi.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Minister of Finance, Mr. Miltenberger.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. That review is implicit in the work the managers do. It is not built into the form, but as part of managing their respective budgets – the Ministers, department managers – they have to make that determination. They have to look at the budgets. They have to look at the need for travel. We place a very, very heavy emphasis in the North on community travel, on consultation, on working across the Territories with the Aboriginal governments, with NGOs. It’s a very time-consuming, expensive process, but that’s implicit in jobs that managers do. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, thanks to the Minister. I have no problem with that. The Duty Travel Policy of the FAA manual says that all travel is to be completed by the most economical and practical means available, but that only refers to ensuring best value once the decision to travel has been made. We have policy guidelines requiring senior management approval for travel to southern Canada with the advances in virtual travel through technology.
Will the Minister ask his officials to examine what controls could be put in place in the travel authorization process to ensure alternative communication means are shown to be impractical before personal travel can be requested? Mahsi.
Mr. Speaker, I would suggest to the Member that that would make a topic of discussion at the Refocusing Government committee, that I am chair of, could take a look at it. The answer would be we will look at how we do this. As we move into another budget cycle, we are keeping the financial discipline on government through this coming year, a 2 percent cap on growth. We are being frugal already, but we can never be too careful. We will have that matter reviewed at our next Refocusing Government meeting. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, thanks again to the Minister’s commitment. I appreciate that. I do note that this year’s travel budget projections are slightly down from last year’s, in line with what the Minister was saying. The Minister will acknowledge that $17 million in annual travel costs is a big bill for half of our civil service. Even an efficiency of 10 percent would free up major dollars for other needs. Some departments seem to have extraordinarily high travel costs, in comparison to others, with no obvious explanation. We need a challenge and verification method for ensuring travel is being prudently purchased.
Thank you. This is a big territory, 1.3 million square miles. A lot of it is not connected by road. We have enormous costs to do the jobs necessary. We’ve also made a commitment in this House to support all the communities. We’ve made a commitment in this House and this government to support consultation, community visits, getting the government out of Yellowknife to the people.
We appreciate the need for using technology like telehealth and those types of things. The Mackenzie Valley fibre optic line, we believe, will improve the efficiencies of the health system, it will improve and enable us to do the things that the Member is talking about, things like videoconferencing without any concern about bandwidth, that type of thing.
We are starting a budget process again. We’re going to take this to refocusing of that commitment, and if there’s a concern by the Member’s office or through the respective committees to review travel, of course, we are fully committed to working with committees, as well, to identify areas of concern. If travel is one of them, then we will work with committee and try to sort those out. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister Miltenberger. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I think the Minister has made a solid commitment there and I’ll look forward to working with him. We don’t have an internal auditor general, obviously, but a functional audit of a category of expenditures across government might be a wise move, especially given the potential savings involved. But the Minister has committed to come to committee to discuss the possibility of improving travel policy safeguards. So will the Minister hear from committee and include their perspectives on what should be included in that review? I appreciate the Minister’s commitments again. Thank you.
Thank you. The commitment was, of course, that if the committee identifies an issue and they want myself, as Finance Minister, or other Ministers to appear before them and discuss a particular issue, of course we are there to work with committees as with all or any issues. If travel is one of them, we’ll do that, keeping in mind a lot of the conditions, but we can have that full and frank discussion with committee about the type of travel, the amount of travel, the cost of travel, the reason for travel and all those types of things. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Mr. Moses.
