Just briefly on the clarity and so on of the budget, I'd like to just get some clarity. The Minister says that the GNWT intends to realign $135 million in expenditures. For clarification, does that mean cut, or is he realigning it some other way? Maybe disappearing it or something.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. The honourable Minister of Finance, Mr. Roland.
Mr. Speaker, I think if we just did an example from Mains to Mains, or even Revised Mains to Mains, we'd see that from Mains to Mains of ’07-08, as a practice of budgetary process, we're growing by 5.5 per cent, if you take out the one-time bump-ups for trucks that have been put in place and so on. So when we're talking about realignment, there's going to be a portion that we need to cap, or manage our growth of government. So there will be some reduction — Members are talking about reductions in different levels of programs — and an impact on some of our employees. But we want to reinvest money in the Northwest Territories, as well, and that's where we've come up with the $75 million figure of reinvesting that in the Northwest Territories in key priority areas that departments will have to be accountable for and show that they've made an investment, not just throwing more dollars into existing programs that are sometimes questionable.
I acknowledge that I'm really dense on this stuff, but let me just read the sentence again: The GNWT intends to realign $135 million in expenditures with $75 million to be reallocated to those spending priorities. What is the difference between “realign” and “reallocate?”
Mr. Speaker, as we put this plan in place, we looked at a $135 million overall reduction. Seventy-five million dollars of that would need to be reinvested in our priorities. As we put this plan together, it clearly shows we've not met our targets, and in the fact the budget still grows. So it's pretty hard to put it into the reduction scenarios that the unions have been talking about, and that's our initial language as well. We're having to manage our growth and find some dollars from in the system to reinvest. Of course, those who are affected in the delivery of those programs, as well as receiving those programs, see that as a direct reduction. It’s a matter of our language, I guess. We could have talked about the target of a $135 million reduction and out of that, $75 million looking for reinvestment.
That would certainly be clear language and understandable, which would be a refreshing change here. Just one more clarification. On B-5 there's a graph in the Budget Address, and it lists components of change, strategic initiatives and other initiatives that I think total $72 million according to the paragraph under “Expenditures” on the same page. What's the difference here between strategic initiatives and other initiatives, and are those outlined somewhere that's accessible?
Mr. Speaker, I know the Ministers will be available for all the detailed questions Members may have in each department of those initiatives that are affected. In this part, as the government has prepared the budget — as I stated earlier, I believe it was yesterday — in the budget process when we talked about the normal business planning cycle, letters go out to departments in June and August and capital gets added. That is all put together and presented to Members in September for review and reporting back, and then Cabinet takes that back and makes some changes. We present a budget in February or March. That's a typical year process. So some of this work — the other initiatives — was in fact beginning to be looked at and talked about by previous Assemblies, and we’ve looked at that work and they aligned with our priorities. But the strategic initiatives are the ones that flow out of the work that we did starting this government.
Thank you, Mr. Roland. Oral questions. The honourable Member for Hay River South, Mrs. Groenewegen.
