Michael Ballantyne

Thank you, Mr. Chair. On page 118 this is a revenue summary which is a grant-in-kind. Then on page 126 are grants, contributions, and transfers. It's possible to have grants-in-kind that wouldn't be showing up as revenue. In the case of these ones for Executive, they just happen to, and that's why they're duplicated there. In other departments you won't necessarily see them presented this way because that might be revenue that isn't a grant-in-kind. I hope that's helpful. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As the Minister has indicated, the Auditor General’s recommendations were reviewed. The deputy minister of Finance and I, along with some other senior deputies, did meet with the Auditor General’s staff and had good discussions about what they were intending by their recommendations. What emerged from that is the need for all departments to have an approach to risk management that’s clearly articulated. Through the Deputy Ministers Audit Committee we have been working through the Audit Bureau staff to develop principles and templates for risk management that are being...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. We’re building capacity in a number of different ways. One is we do have professional evaluators. We have folks, for example, who have Master’s degrees in program evaluation who work in the unit, and they can provide that expertise directly. But we also are trying to work in partnership with departments that don’t have that expertise, so that they can work with us and pick up some training on the project, as it were. Of course, we’re always encouraging staff to take advantage of training opportunities. Several of the folks that we have who have earned Master’s degrees in...

All of those positions are in directorate.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. The positions that are dedicated to the devolution office include an expert policy advisor, a project officer, devolution communications officer, the executive director of implementation, a devolution project leader, an HR implementation leader, water management planning and implementation leader and the departmental devolution lead. I should have said there are two expert policy advisor positions there.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yes, the analysts in program review have also been busy. They’ve been busy supporting these committees that have been established in addition to the new initiatives, so they’re working jointly with their colleagues in strategic planning and in the Bureau of Statistics to provide that support, not only to the committees of Cabinet, the new initiative committees, but also to a couple of the deputy committees. For example, as we’re looking at the decentralization exercise, we have access to those analysts to help us with information gathering and analysis as well, so they’re...

I’m sorry; I didn’t quite complete my list. Also, that was the implementation planning side and on the negotiations planning side, we have our chief negotiator, two assistant negotiators and another policy advisor. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As the Premier indicated, the corporate communications group does meet regularly. This is an interdepartmental working group chaired by the deputy secretary for corporate communications. They have undertaken a number of reviews in their work plan. I’m not entirely sure about this specific review that the Member is referring to, but it may have occurred before my time. We would certainly undertake to get back to the Member with any specific information on a review of standards, which is, I believe, what she was asking about.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The deputy ministers, particularly of the social program envelope, have been meeting to discuss ways to improve inter-departmental coordination with the NGO and voluntary sector. What we’ve determined through those discussions is that program departments have very strong relationships with the organizations that they work with. It doesn’t appear to us at this point that Executive could really add a lot of value to those relationships other than doing what we’re already doing, which is the provision of some workshops for the NGO sector which the Member is aware of. The...