Agreed.
Thank you. I will ask the Sergeant-at-Arms to escort the Minister’s witnesses to the table.
For the record again today, would you please introduce your witnesses.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I have with me Mike Aumond, deputy minister of Finance; and Mr. Sandy Kalgutkar, deputy secretary to the FMB. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister Miltenberger. The page we left off on yesterday in your document is page 7, Executive, operations, directorate, not previously authorized, $575,000. Mr. Moses.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I didn’t get a chance to ask all my questions and just the dialogue gets you kind of wanting to ask a few more questions in terms of where we are going with these five positions that have been in more of the discussion from yesterday.
I would like to ask the Minister, if these five positions are approved, as I mentioned yesterday, under the key findings there were a lot of issues in terms of management. There were discussions around policy as well as some of the directives that fall under these two groups. I wonder, if these five positions are approved, will that open up more free time for the other communications staff to pick up the work and start working on these directives, those 15 key findings and address some of the issues surrounding those. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Moses. Mr. Miltenberger.
Thank you, Madam Chair. What will be happening is that, as the review pointed out, we will have an undersized communications staff for the amount of work that there is. We have taken over about $65 million worth of new programs and services in the land, water and resource development area, so there is going to be some restructuring, reorganizing done, better coordination they are going to have to pick up and do as we up our game in relation to all our post-devo activities. We also know we have to do the adjustments that were recommended. This is going to give us some more capacity, allow us to better coordinate and redo the structure so that they are, in fact, more effective. Thank you.
Just another quick question for clarity. These five positions we are looking at locating them, has there been any discussion or any work being done to look at putting these five positions out into the regional centres? We have TeleHealth. We have the fibre optic one coming down. There are better ways of communicating. If we are looking at making communication based on a lot of these new responsibilities that we have, why can’t we do that in the regions and get our regional residents more updated and educated and aware of what our responsibilities are, rather than having to do it through headquarters? Thank you, Madam Chair.
One of the biggest needs was assessed to be the need for better coordination and resources, some resources at the executive level, the headquarters level to help coordinate better and more effectively the current system as well as all the programs and services that we have taken on since post-devolution. There are folks in the regions as well. But the overall need is for government to do a better overall job of coordinating and managing the communication requirements, and we are in, fundamentally, the communicating business. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister Miltenberger. Next on the list I have Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I have a motion. I would like to move that $516,000 be deleted from the activity “directorate” under the Department of Executive, operations expenditures, not previously authorized, on page 7, for the provision of funding for costs associated with the communications functional review. Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. I am just going to give a moment now for the Pages to pass the motion out so that everyone has a copy of it in front of them before we vote.
We are just going to proceed here. We just have to wait one moment for the motion to be distributed.
Thank you. The motion is in order. To the motion. Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I will just make a few brief remarks. I think there were a lot of remarks yesterday as we discussed this page and these expenditures. Members have a lot of concerns, one of which is that this should have come through with the budget that we passed not even two months ago. Maybe it was more than two months. We have yet to see a plan for how the government is going to reshape our communications complement of staff. Those are just two things and I think that, as Members, we feel that this is something that should have been funded through the regular appropriations process, not a supplementary appropriation. Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. To the motion. Mr. Dolynny.
Thank you, Madam Chair. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a chance to speak to this motion the other day as I was sitting in your capacity, so this is my first time to address this and I appreciate the ability to do so under the motion here.
Without repeating what has been said in the House, this expenditure, really, I don’t believe it was well thought out, even though everything that was presented to committee here was under the guise or umbrella of something that was supposed to be well thought out and it didn’t occur.
From a managerial point of view, I look at this as a manager and I look at what is the ask here. The ask here is to add five new positions to an already existing base of 27 to deal with our communications. All the while, I guess the rationalization for that was because we are now undertaking, as we were told – and I heard two different numbers yesterday – anywhere from 63 to 65 million dollars more of so-called work.
It doesn’t take much rocket science to equate the increase in capacity in dealing with the amount of workload. We are being asked right now to approve the capacity building of almost 19 percent increase in a department which is only really increasing its workload by about 3.5 percent with this so-called new money or new devolution money and new way of doing business.
If one was looking at this as a manager, one would have to be suspect as to whether or not this would even pass the nose of the board of directors.
Madam Chair, we are that board of directors and, by de facto, we are the oversight here, the so-called natural ombudsmen, and I think we are enacting that power as ombudsmen to say, “This will not fly.” Unless the department has a better way of proving its need to increase this area by 19 percent of personnel, the argument that they have before committee is just not that satisfactory. For that reason, I definitely will be supporting this motion.
Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. To the motion. Mr. Menicoche.
Thank you very much, Madam Chair. Much of our discussion over this item and these communications positons is about due process. Myself, I do feel that this could have been better addressed in the business plan and not at this late stage, so I certainly will be supporting this motion for deletion of this item under consideration.
Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. To the motion. Premier McLeod.
Thank you, Madam Chair, for the opportunity to make a few comments. First of all, with regard to the question of due process, we mentioned it yesterday that committee was offered briefings on three occasions but chose not to take advantage of them. The last letter that we sent was December 18th. There was no response from committee as to the feedback and the response to the previous correspondence.
Communications in the public sector is about ensuring that citizens have access to their government. It means providing them with information they need to access programs and services and to benefit from the work government does. Communications is also about providing services to each of your constituents. Effective and strategic communications will deliver the right information to our communities in timely and relevant ways. Public sector communications is also about getting clear, accessible authorities’ information to residents during emergencies, and an organized, strategic approach to the use of social media is one example of how these positions will bring effectiveness to the role of GNWT communicators.
You may recall when we had a blackout around New Year’s. There was a lot of criticism that we didn’t use more social media. We want to bring our communications efforts up to modern realities. Also, last year’s fire season is a perfect example of how social media could work for us. Twitter and Facebook played an important role in notifying residents instantly, and this can and should become the standard practice of other departments, other issues, other information.
As a government, we are still in the dark ages when it comes to the use of social media. We did not have the resources to standardize and manage this well, as was pointed out in the after action reviews that recently came out. Using radio, television and newspapers to build awareness about important services is important. Reaching out to citizens through online surveys to hear their thoughts on new policies and programs or regulations will help us immensely. Ensuring that our tourism and economic opportunities are shared nationally and internationally will benefit from these additional resources. Helping citizens understand the regulatory system in the Northwest Territories and opportunities for participation is important. We also have about 20 GSOs in the communities that we use to pass information on to their clientele, and these additional resources would improve those services in those areas.
Thank you, Premier McLeod. To the motion. Mr. Hawkins.
Thank you, Madam Chair, for recognizing me. I appreciate the opportunity to speak on this.
Just because they didn’t follow the normal process doesn’t make it any less important, and I think that’s an important fact. It doesn’t make it any less important or any less necessary. I think the Premier spoke about some of the issue. He didn’t say any of my issues. I have problems with communications, and I will give them to his list so he can add them.
I personally think communications needs to be better coordinated. It’s my opinion that we should have a communications secretariat in some way that actually works directly with the Premier’s office in a manner that disseminates out. We create a chain where we work with newer communications folks, work with more experienced ones, a little bit of a network there that all tie together. That way everyone is working from the same page and they understand what departments are doing and even that feeds up better to the Cabinet table. I would prefer a system that works more integrated than the one we have now. Is this the right approach? Well, maybe one can look at this as the thin tip of the wedge that we’re trying to start, the smallest piece, and hopefully it will expand beyond that.
I think we don’t demand accountability of our communications people in the same way that we do out of our politicians. We have to have a system that can meet those demands when we put the pressure on them to communicate better, as we’ve seen in the past. We have high expectations here, and how do we do that when they’re all in these little pockets all over the place beating to their own drums or coordinating in their own methods but, as I said earlier, not integrated.
I’m not sure. Well, frankly, I really don’t care that they came late to the table with their request. To me it doesn’t make it less important.
The last point I’ll say is in this modern age, I’m not sure all the communications positions need to be in Yellowknife. I say that because some of them are new. I think maybe it would make sense that the coordination of them might be where the masses are, obviously. But in this modern day with the way people communicate it’s not the same as in the old days whereas they all had to be at the same table, face to face, pressing flesh directly with each other. In this modern day you could have a communications expert in every single region rather than nestled ever so comfortably in every single department. That’s not to say I’m suggesting any one of our communications people don’t do any good work. That’s not what I’m saying. It’s just, we need to look at, sort of, how we organize them, as well, and I would certainly hope that that would be part of the longer term goal, because there could be some great opportunities here to find regional positions out of some of these, out of all of these positions. I’m not speaking to these three and these two which are obviously five positions, but I’m also speaking about the whole suite of communication positions of probably about 20 or more.
I won’t vote for the motion. I do appreciate my colleagues’ perspectives, but at this time I simply just don’t share it.
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. To the motion.
Question.
Question is being called. The motion is defeated.
---Defeated
I will read this page again. Executive, operations expenditures, directorate, not previously authorized, $575,000.
Agreed.
Ministers’ offices, not previously authorized, $335,000.
Agreed.
Total department, not previously authorized, $910,000.
Agreed.
Turning to page 8, then. Finance, operations expenditure summary, budget, treasury and debt management, not previously authorized, $1,000.
Agreed.
Deputy minister’s office, not previously authorized, $743,000.
Agreed.
Office of the comptroller general, not previously authorized, $20,000.
Agreed.
Total department, not previously authorized, $764,000.
Agreed.
Health and Social Services, operations expenditure summary, administrative and support services, not previously authorized, $36,000.
Agreed.
Ambulatory care services, not previously authorized, $1,000.
Agreed.
Community health programs, not previously authorized, $215,000.
Agreed.
Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I wanted to ask a question here about the transfer from the Department of Education, Culture and Employment of the Child and Family Resource Program to the Health and Social Services Healthy Family Program. It’s not clear here why the transfer either is necessary or why it’s happening, if I could get an explanation, please. Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Mr. Kalgutkar.
Thank you, Madam Chair. The $150,000 was originally part of ECE’s $1.25 million approved for Early Childhood Development work. The Child and Family Resource Program, which is a component of that initiative, the departments were working together and determined that that funding would be better spent and better leveraged under the Department of Health and Social Services Healthy Family Program initiative and that’s why the transfer is taking place. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Kalgutkar. Ms. Bisaro.
Thanks, Madam Chair, and thanks to Mr. Kalgutkar. It doesn’t explain to me, though, why this program is being moved. Does it mean that there is no longer a Child and Family Resource Program? I need to understand if it’s only partially being moved, if the program still exists within ECE, or if the whole program now is defunct and it’s become part of the Healthy Family Program. If that’s the case, have the goals of the Healthy Family Program changed with the addition of the Child and Family Resource Program? Thank you.
