Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions will be to the Minister who’s responsible for the Strategic Initiative Committee on Refocusing Government, and that will be Minister Michael Miltenberger.
Mr. Speaker, referring back to my Member’s statement, of course, I’d like to know what this Minister has done to examine the costs of rolling up most of these boards into a regional services model. If he has an idea of what that costs, will he make it public?
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. Mr. Miltenberger.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As the Member is aware, we’ve been doing extensive work on this particular subject since we were formed as a government. I intend to come forward in this session with a major statement on that issue, and I’ll be prepared to put that information before this House at that time.
Mr. Speaker, has the Minister done any work or examined the efficiency of what this roll-up will mean to most boards and regional service models as well?
Mr. Speaker, I ask the forbearance and patience of the Member. When I come forward with this statement before the House, I will lay all that information out, as well as other areas that the refocusing committee has been working on, like the program review.
What work has been done to examine the relationship of aboriginal governments and their regions so that when we take self-government models and overlap them with these regional boards’ jurisdictions…? What work is being done to examine that type of relationship and the problems that this will cause if we proceed with a regional based board model?
I appreciate the Member’s enthusiasm for getting ahead of the parade, but I’ll just once again ask him to have patience. I’ll be coming forward with a Minister’s statement that will speak to those issues. Then we can engage in any number of questions that the Member may have.
Final supplementary, Mr. Hawkins.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Well, when this Minister’s statement that seems to answer all questions comes forward, will it also talk about when public consultation will happen and how that will involve the public, as opposed to how these taxes have not involved Members as effectively as possible and have only involved certain members of the public, that kind of discussion? Will it have that detail?
Mr. Speaker, the statement I’ll bring forward will lay out the work done to date, what we see as the work yet to be done, a timeline for doing that type of work and rolling out the implementation with target dates set in there.
In regard to the taxes the Member was apprised of what was going on. There has been a significant mail-out across the Northwest Territories. We’ve consulted with a multitude of organizations. We’ve had a two day round table, and we’re still soliciting support until the middle of next week. We look forward to bringing forward a very comprehensive piece of work that lays out the results of all that effort. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. The honourable Member for Frame Lake, Ms. Bisaro.
