Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to use question period today to return to my Member’s statement, which talked about public disclosure of public salaries.
I highlighted that the Mackenzie Valley Review Board has recently, as of Friday, February 28, 2014, taken the courageous step forward of publicizing their honoraria between the board chair and the board. It’s time that this government starts following the example followed by six out of 10 provinces.
My question to the Minister of Human Resources is: What steps can this government take forward in publicizing all our board appointment chairs and members’ honoraria in a similar manner to the Mackenzie Valley Review Board? Can we do this? Will he do this? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. The honourable Member for Human Resources, Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Legislative authority would have to be changed. The step would be to amend the ATIPP Act and the Public Service Act. Thank you.
I want to thank the team effort on that answer. I could hear various folks giving the answer. How do we amend this act? Would the Minister of Human Resources be willing to bring forward amendments to the Access to Information and Privacy Act to accommodate this type of step that has, as I have highlighted, been done by six out of 10 provinces and, of course, that also now includes the Mackenzie Valley Review Board, who have all taken the courageous step to publicize their salaries and honoraria. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I would be prepared to discuss the ATIPP Act with the Minister of Justice. I will talk to the department about the Public Service Act and any considerations with disclosing salaries. At this time, in the ATIPP, in most incidents with a jurisdiction this size, it is considered an unreasonable invasion of personal privacy to disclose salaries. Thank you.
I look forward to any movement we can make on this particular file. When we often hear that board chairs make between $130,000 and even over $200,000 per year to sit on those boards and we hear that the honoraria for those boards could range anywhere from $150,000 or more, the public wants answers. When we are paying our board folks more than we are paying our teachers, our nurses and even plumbers and policemen, something is wrong.
The next obvious question to the Minister is: What can we do to bring some transparency to some of these board appointment honoraria that need a level of scrutiny, some sunshine on that list to get to the bottom of that? Quite frankly, the public wants to know what they’re paid and they want to see where their money is going.
Again, as I indicated, we would be pleased to look at both the ATIPP Act and the Public Service Act to see if it would be a legislative proposal which would be shared with all committee members. If this House felt that it would be in the best interest of the public to disclose salaries of individuals, then we will move in that direction. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Hawkins.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m seeing a small crack at the door here where there seems to be…(inaudible)…to do this. I could go on with great example, but I think the Minister is hearing the issue.
Would the Minister be willing to put this paper together, provide a proposal to committee members on this side of the House before we begin our May session this year? I want to make sure that we start doing this in a timely way. The last thing we want to hear is some day we will get to it, but that means nothing to the public.
Would the Minister be willing to meet the challenge of this particular proposal before May of this year, so we can take a look at this and push up our sleeves and put a little sunshine, which is the best disinfectant, on this problem? Thank you.
Recognizing that the disclosure of salary wages and the number of individuals that are within that salary range across the GNWT or the boards also give the public a very good indication of where their money is going; recognizing that, if committee still wishes to, in a small jurisdiction such as ours where you will see that Yukon, Nunavut and Prince Edward Island also don’t disclose because they consider those jurisdictions to be too small; recognizing all that, if the Priorities and Planning committee across the floor want a legislative proposal to look at disclosing salaries, then we’ll look at it. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. The honourable Member for Sahtu, Mr. Yakeleya.
