Debates of June 1, 2005 (day 6)

Agreed.

Thank you. Sergeant-at-Arms, please escort in the witnesses.

For the record, Mr. Minister, would you please introduce your witness?

Mr. Chairman, with me today is Lew Voytilla, secretary to the FMB.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. General comments. First on the list is Ms. Lee.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I don’t have general comments on the opening statement, but I do have some questions on the proposed expenditure to prepare for the Mackenzie gas project of $1.3 million for the Department of Municipal and Community Affairs and $378,000 for the Department of Health and Social Services. Certainly this is something that many individuals and groups across the Territories have been asking for the government to do. I know the government has been trying to get the federal government to perhaps take over a bigger burden of it and the GNWT has been left with no choice but to put some money in there. So it is certainly a good thing, but as I sit here I have hardly any detail about where this money is going to go. I understand the time frame for the workshops that the Department of Health and Social Services are planning on are quite short. Perhaps even the end of June might be the targeted completion date. Can the Minister give us any information, perhaps a framework or terms of reference? How does the government see this thing rolled out?

Thank you, Ms. Lee. Mr. Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, one part of the ask that we put forward in the supplementary appropriation belongs to the Department of Health and Social Services. The other part belongs to Municipal and Community Affairs. The ask from the Department of Health and Social Services for the conference is $378,000. Indeed, the conferences are to be held during the month of June in Norman Wells, Inuvik and Fort Simpson. I guess the report will be brought back to the Minister at that point. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Ms. Lee.

I am sorry, I didn’t catch all that. Does the Minister have the dates of when this will happen, other than it will happen in June? It is June 1st.

Thank you. I heard him say sometime in June, but can he be more specific in terms of days? Mr. Minister. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, the Minister of Health and Social Services has that information available. He can probably better respond to that.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Mr. Miltenberger.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I would just like to put out, as well, that Health and Social Services is acting in this capacity as sort of the current chair of the social envelope Ministers meeting or committee which includes Education, Culture and Employment and Housing and Justice, as well. This is a collaborative effort to get direct feedback and recommendations from the impacted communities on the impending Mackenzie gas pipeline.

There is a workshop that was held earlier this week; yesterday, Monday and Tuesday, I believe, in Fort Simpson. There is one next week in Inuvik and then in the third week in June in Norman Wells, after which we will be collating all the recommendations and bring that back to the committee of Ministers for review and they will be sharing that information as well with, of course, the members of the Social Programs committee. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Ms. Lee.

Mr. Chairman, the general public out there have already heard about this and they are inquiring of us about details. How are the people who might want to take part in this able to find out this information? It is not an unlimited amount of money. It is a good chunk of money, but not money that could be spread thin and wide and forever. Could the Minister indicate as to what he can tell the NGOs or parties and people who might be interested in taking part in this and what they should be doing to get involved in that? Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Lee. Mr. Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, the funding has been broken down into the different regions and the number of delegates from those communities. For example, Deh Cho, Fort Simpson, four delegates from the 13 communities and GNWT staff. Norman Wells, again four delegates from the 11 communities and staff as well as the Beaufort-Delta. It has been developed with a budget around how many people they are going to get from the different communities and the staff there and the cost for travel, accommodation and facilitator fees. It has been broken down for that. For actual information, they expect to have about 124 delegates for communications and we could probably go to the Minister of Health and Social Services for that specific information. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Mr. Miltenberger.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, we have been in communication with the communities, the community leadership, working with them to pick delegates and to arrange all the logistics, as Minister Roland has covered off for the most part. We have facilitators in place for the three conferences and we have been working fast and hard to make sure that we get this done right. We have been using basically the same template as was used by Municipal and Community Affairs when they had a workshop in Inuvik a number of months ago to try to achieve the same positive results. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Ms. Lee.

Could I ask the Minister who is in charge of picking delegates in Yellowknife? Where would the NGOs or persons who might want to participate in this program or in this workshop from Yellowknife go in Yellowknife to find out whether they could be picked as delegates or not?

Thank you, Ms. Lee. Mr. Miltenberger.

Mr. Chairman, I'm not sure to attend one of the workshops in Norman Wells, Inuvik or Simpson. Is that what the Member is asking?

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. The Member is asking in particular to Yellowknife delegates. Thank you. Ms. Lee.

Yes, sorry, Mr. Chairman, I should clarify. I am embarrassed to admit this, but I think it finally clued in that we might not have a workshop in Yellowknife. Is that true? If that is the case, how would Yellowknife people put their input into this process? Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Lee. Mr. Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, the process for establishing this money and for identifying the workshops and the delegates within those workshops, I don't have. The Deh Cho communities -- 13 of them -- I don't have a list of the communities on hand. Maybe the Minister of Health and Social Services has that. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Mr. Miltenberger.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, this immediate focus was on the communities along the pipeline route and through the impacted regions and those communities. Yellowknife was not seen as being one of the impacted communities on the pipeline route on the immediate first go-round. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Ms. Lee.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I guess that is pretty clear here, but I think there are, and I am wondering if the Minister or the government has any plans to invite those groups who might be based in Yellowknife but share an NWT focus, whether they be chambers of commerce or numerous NGOs who might have particular work or objectives that although they are based here, they are not really Yellowknife groups but are territorial-wide based who might have something useful who could gain from these workshops or to be able to contribute to these workshops. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Lee. Mr. Miltenberger.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, the first three scheduled workshops are going to be rolled out relatively quickly. As we complete that process and review the results and we look to the future in terms of next steps, we will be considering looking further afield at other possible impacted areas on a secondary or tertiary level that may require some similar attention. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Ms. Lee.

That is it for now on this issue. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Lee. Next on the list I have Mr. Ramsay.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have a number of items that I wanted to cover and I will start with just wanting to make a few comments on the new money that is there for initiatives to prepare for the Mackenzie gas project. I have said it many times before, I think we are, as a government, more reactive to things that happen, rather than proactive. Here we are again requesting some jobs, some positions when this type of work and the pipeline office is still not staffed up to the level that it is supposed to be staffed up to.

This is work that should have been done years ago. We should have been planning for this years ago. To me, it looks like poor, poor planning. Now we are coming back hiring four new positions in MACA, another position in Health and Social Services. I'm still not convinced, and haven't been convinced from day one, that this government has a coordinated approach to dealing with pipeline related issues.

The pipeline office was supposed to help, but we are still going off in separate directions, as I see it, department by department. I know that there are working groups with deputy ministers and whatnot, but I still do not see the coordination that I think has to be there.

Mr. Chairman, the first question I have for the Minister is I am wondering about the $440,000 for three community benefits agreements specialists and a community benefits coordinator. Are those jobs based on a one-year term, or are these indeterminate positions with the GNWT? Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Mr. Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I am just trying to get that information to see if in fact they are for a term position. I think we had better go to the Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs. I don't have the detail in my briefing book.

Thank you, Mr. Roland. Mr. McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, the positions identified were the four different positions under MACA for a two-year term.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Mr. Ramsay.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. If they’re for a two-year term, I don’t know how you hire four people for $440,000. If you look at the Department of Health and Social Services at $110,000, which I know is a two-year term, but we know with certainty that we’re going to need $550,000 more if they’re all two-year terms. So why would we just come back and piecemeal this? Why don’t you call it what it is and that is an investment of $1 million on new staff, instead of coming back next year? I don’t know how we’re going to deal with the $550,000 that’s going to have to come back next year for these employees. I don’t again see the coordination here. It seems to be coming at the last minute. Although it’s much needed and I’ll be the first to admit that it’s needed, I think there has to be some more coordination and proper planning in that regard.

I know some of my colleagues brought this up earlier during question period, but how is it -- and I’d like the Minister to explain this to me -- there’s $2.4 million in the budget for 2004-05 for the Territorial Treatment Centre here in Yellowknife. A whole year, a fiscal year lapses, that money doesn’t get spent and here we are in this supplementary looking like we’re going to carry over some money that was initially for the Territorial Treatment Centre and also we’re going to take that $2.4 million that was initially earmarked for the Territorial Treatment Centre in 2004-05 and all of a sudden it appears in 2006-07 for the Dene K’onia facility in Hay River. I really am having a great deal of difficulty in trying to understand how a government, and we’re part of this government…We approved the budget in 2004-05 for a certain capital expenditure. A whole year lapses, we’re not informed, we’re not consulted on those capital dollars that are now going in to renovate Dene K’onia.

Mr. Chairman, somebody owes us, on this side of the House, an explanation as to why that happens and how it can happen. To me it’s like hocus-pocus. It’s there one day, it’s not the next, and we’re not informed about it. The communication has to be there. We have to know what’s going on. It’s big dollars. It’s not like it’s $100,000 in capital money. It’s $2.4 million going into a program that we know works here in Yellowknife and now it’s not there. I think the Minister or his staff owes us an explanation on how that happens. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

---Applause

Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Mr. Roland.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I see we’re getting into the detail of the document and I’ll gladly go to that. The general issue of planning and of allocation of dollars, as I stated in question period earlier, was the fact that as dollars are approved or the appropriation is approved for the government to spend money in those areas, if that doesn’t proceed and we want to keep the money on the books, we have to come back to this Assembly and ask for approval to carry it over, which this document has a lot of. In this particular case the money is coming back for approval. Again, for the record, the plan is for 18 months from now, for almost two years from now. So it is going to go back into the business plan for future years. For this portion, the department is asking for $505,000, I believe, to begin that plan and is coming to this House for approval.

I don’t know how much more the Members want. We can pull out other projects to show that they’ve been on the books and communities have expectations that those dollars would end up being approved and when the final document comes forward to the House, they’re no longer in the books because of changing priorities within departments. This one happens to be mid-stream in the sense that we’ve got the budget and some changes have been going forward.

I have been informed that as this project came up in substantiation through business planning, that it was always stated that the department would be looking at other options available to it, if options did come available to where the location or facility would be. So it’s not absolutely new. There has been discussion. Somba K’e was one of the things that I was informed about as maybe an alternate facility for the Territorial Treatment Centre. So it is something that has been highlighted and passed on and is what I’ve been informed about. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Roland. Mr. Ramsay.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The interesting thing is it’s one thing that you had the $2.4 million in the budget and, like I said, it disappeared for an entire fiscal year. If you’re going to reprofile that money, wouldn’t it make sense to put it in the business plan for last year? If you’re going to reprofile the money, it never happened that way, Mr. Chairman. Committee never knew about it, Regular Members never knew about it until this week or last week. It’s just the rollout of it. Maybe we can learn something from this on the communication side of things. If you’re going to move substantial amounts of capital dollars, let us know. Tell us about it. Certainly some people are going to have some questions about that. That’s why we’re asking these questions today.

I have some other questions that I wanted to ask, Mr. Chairman. Perhaps I’ll give Mr. Braden a chance to ask some questions on, I’m pretty sure, the same topic. Then I’ll come back to the other two issues that I wanted to address. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. I understand that Mr. Ramsay might have further questions later on. At this time I’d like to recognize Mr. Braden.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Respecting committee’s normal process here of saving detailed or specific questions to that item on the page, I will not be talking specifically to the Territorial Treatment Centre project, but it sets the context for the questions that I have and that is related to what Mr. Ramsay was speaking about and questions earlier today in the House.

We have protocols that we have worked hard to develop in this House and in this consensus approach that we try to take here. As plans are formulated, developed and eventually approved in this Assembly and anticipated and expected in our communities, when things for whatever reason -- and usually there is a good reason -- are delayed or changed, our expectation and our protocols and our conventions have been that the departments and Ministers will come back to those MLAs in those communities and give at least a status report or some indication of what’s going on.

In this case here, we had an approval for a $2.4 million expenditure on a building here in Yellowknife. It didn’t happen. Months went by before we learned about it and here we are today. The question I’d like to pose is on the protocol and convention that we have come to expect here. I wanted to ask the Minister what is Cabinet’s guideline for when Members, when MLAs, are to be advised that a project is not going to proceed as planned? What are the triggers that Cabinet uses to say, oh, okay, we’d better go and tell somebody?

Thank you, Mr. Braden. Mr. Roland.