Thank you, Minister Miltenberger. Minister Bob McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. As the Minister of Finance has indicated, the previous Financial Management Board direction has been that the cost of collective bargaining not be included in the base budget primarily because the costs don’t occur every year and they are variable from one collective bargaining cycle to another. So, for example, collective agreements could last from two years to four years. So it makes it difficult to predict when funding will be required.
But on a personal level, I should serve notice that we’ll be seeking ongoing funding for collective bargaining, because we feel that we should be in a much stronger position if we had base funding for collective bargaining built into our budget and we’ll be seeking funding for that purpose in the future. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Mr. Ramsay.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. If that’s the case and this is just the Department of HR, if that’s the case and the government’s attitude towards budgeting: figure out what it costs and come back to us later. That change in how we fund the supp reserve and going from $25 million to $10 million, that’s just not going to work. Obviously departments are going come back for more than $10 million. Specifically I’d like to ask the Minister, through you, Mr. Chairman, what exactly did HR spend the additional supp money on if they don’t have any money to be spending on the contract negotiations? Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Minister Miltenberger.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. According to the information that we’ve provided, there was $120,000 on corporate human resource services; employee services for $600,000; for increased costs associated with employee medical travel and dental costs, $400,000 for that; and addressing the pay and benefits backlog, $300,000, and they have $80,000 put towards the Human Resource Strategy and policy. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. What is the Minister’s strategy for dealing with the lowering of the supp reserve to $10 million, given the fact that you’re going to let departments continually come back for more money? How are departments going to be kept in check so that the $15 million that was dispersed or is going to be dispersed again next year to the departments, how are we going to maintain that departments use that money for what they say they’re going to use it for and we’re not overspending our supp reserve by eight to 10 million dollars? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As I indicated when we previously met, we are of course looking for the advice of committee and Members. This is a new process, this is the first year. So we had the discussion over do you budget estimates into your actual budget or do you wait for them to come back.
I would point out, as well, that the growth of government is probably the lowest it’s been in this budget than it’s been in many a year, thanks to the work that was done in the last budget and carried forward to this budget. We’re very sensitive to trying to control our costs, especially now where we expect our revenues to be squeezed significantly. So we’ve chosen a path where we put the $15 million in. If upon review after one year and we want to make adjustments, we’d be more than happy to and interested in the feedback from committee and suggestions. Thank you.
I appreciate the Minister’s offer for suggestions. I’d be willing to take him up on that. Maybe we should be taking a look at the business planning process in its entirety and holding departments more accountable for what material is provided to Members during the business planning process and saying no. I mean, if FMB or Cabinet doesn’t want to say no, maybe the Regular Members would say no to some of this extraordinary spending that’s coming forward. I mean, that’s the type of discussion that we’re going to have to have, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.
Mr. Chairman, FMB does say no with some regularity. They have a fairly tight hand on the purse strings, but we know that there are pressures in program areas that are important to all of us. The issue of the business planning process we started with capital planning, last year we split it out for the first time and I agree with the Member where we want to look at how things are working and if we have to adjust and fine tune and we should be looking to do that before we get too far into spring. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister Miltenberger. Next I have Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I want to express pretty much the same comments that were expressed earlier by Mr. Abernethy and Mr. Ramsay. I, too, have had great difficulty with the size of this supp as it has come forward. It was my expectation that with departments having a certain amount of money to sort of deal with on their own that it might reduce the amount of the supplementary appropriations that have come forward and it has not. So I’m a little disappointed in that.
I think philosophically that giving money to the departments up front, giving the $15 million out is a good idea. I think we should continue to do that, but there has to be some change somewhere in either the mentality of departments or in the mentality of us here, similar to what Mr. Ramsay said. Maybe we have to say no once or twice to get people to wake up and recognize that no, you can’t always be asking for money and always get it.
With regards to HR and the two expenditures on this page, at the risk of being repetitive, I feel very much as Mr. Abernethy does and I’m really pleased to hear from Minister McLeod that they’re going to start asking for funding on an annual basis to fund negotiations. It’s my feeling that we ought to be able to at least approximate a certain amount of money that’s going to be required for negotiations in any year when we are doing contract negotiations. If it varies by $100,000 one way or the other, well, that’s to be expected, but we should at least be putting an amount into the budget to indicate that, yes, we are expecting to negotiate, and probably doing it over multi years is better than doing it at any one year in that it may, unlikely, but it may confuse the union as to what kind of money they are maybe going to be able to work with.
So I can accept these expenditures, but I don’t like it. I recognize that there are costs that we have to bear, but I would think that we need to plan better in the future. That’s all. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Minister Miltenberger.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Not wanting to chew anybody’s cabbage twice, I’ll just thank the Member for her comments and indicate once again that we’re interested to look at making this system as effective as possible for all of us, and that my own sense is, being around a while, is that these costs are going to be incurred, it’s just a matter of how we account for them, how accurately we can do it and how far ahead we can. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister Miltenberger. Committee, we’re on page 7, Executive, operations expenditures, Human Resources, directorate, not previously authorized, $526,000. Agreed?
Agreed.
Human Resources, $526,000.
Agreed.
Page 8, Executive, operations expenditures, Financial Management Board Secretariat, government accounting, not previously authorized, $1.219 million. Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I guess I just have to express my dismay at the amount of money that we’re spending on the Territorial Power Subsidy Program. I know our power rates are high, but it’s a huge amount of money that we’re giving away. This supp is for $1.2 million and when I look at the reserve that was allocated to FMB, another $225,000 went into the Territorial Power Subsidy Program. So it’s like $1.5 million over and above what we budgeted that’s going in there. So I don’t really have a question. Again, I think this is more a comment against this particular program, which we have to change somehow, somewhere. I don’t have a solution, unfortunately. So thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Any comments, Minister Miltenberger?
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think there’s a fundamental agreement that subsidies in the long term are not sustainable and not the goal of any operation like ours. But the reality is until we can make the cost of power affordable in the communities, we’ve embarked on the Territorial Power Support Program and in fact we also have $9 million in for a commercial subsidy to try to lower the cost of power and hopefully the food basket in communities. It is a cost, but for all of us that are on hydro, it’s something that we take for granted. The other thing that people on hydro never have to worry about is they never have to worry about 700 kilowatts, but all the other people in the small communities do. So this is an issue we have to be very careful of. We’ve made a commitment as a Territory and a government of the value of the regions and communities, and this is one of the costs that goes with it. But this is why we put $60 million into alternative energy to try to bring some of those costs under control. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Ms. Bisaro.
No, that’s all. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and I agree with the Minister.
Thank you for that comment. Committee, once again, we’re on page 8, Executive, operations expenditures, Financial Management Board Secretariat, government accounting, not previously authorized, $1.219 million. Agreed?
Agreed.
Total Financial Management Board Secretariat, $1.219 million.
Agreed.
Total department, $1.908 million.
Agreed.
Page 9, Public Works and Services, operations expenditures, asset management, not previously authorized, $640,000.
Agreed.
Total department, $640,000.
Agreed.
Page 10, Health and Social Services, operations expenditures, health services programs, not previously authorized, $8.033 million. Agreed?
Agreed.
Supplementary health programs, $1.2 million. Agreed?
Agreed.
Community health programs, $1.6 million. Agreed?
Agreed.
Total department, $10.833 million. Mr. Krutko.
Out of the $10.8 million, how much of that is for the Inuvik Health Board?
Thank you, Mr. Krutko. Mr. Miltenberger.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We don’t have that number, though we do have the number of deficits, but I don’t have that specific number out of the $10 million.
Thank you, Minister Miltenberger. Does the Minister of Health…Sorry. Minister Miltenberger.
Mr. Chairman, if we are looking at the total $10 million, I looked on the list. There is nothing specifically earmarked for funding to health boards except the mammography in Hay River. The rest of the costs are for physician services in the Northwest Territories or outside of the Northwest Territories. There is supp health or children in care. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister Miltenberger. Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As much as I am somewhat flabbergasted by the amount of money that we have to approve here, I can see that these costs are ones that we don’t have a heck of a lot of control over. I am somewhat concerned when I look at the information we were given on the utilization of the supplementary reserve. Of the over $6 million that the Health department got in their supplementary reserve fund, $2.3 million went to Stanton Hospital and $2.3 million went to the Beaufort-Delta Health and Social Services Authority as one-time funding. That concerns me. That is a pretty healthy amount of money. By giving these lump sum payments to these two authorities, it means that there was some $5 million which wasn’t available to the department to kind of offset some of the costs that we are being asked to approve in this supplementary appropriation. It is a bit of a shell game, I think. I am concerned about the huge costs that we have to bear with Health and Social Services. I doubt the Finance Minister has an explanation, but I would love to hear one if he has it. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Minister Miltenberger.
Mr. Chairman, those two figures were money that was put towards both the Stanton and to Inuvik Health and Social Services Authority as an offset to help them cover some of their costs and mitigation measures that they weren’t able to implement. Thank you.
