Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions are addressed to the Premier. I mentioned in my Member’s statement the other day that the Premier has a couple of times talked about regionalization of government. Yesterday — and I’m working from unedited Hansard from yesterday — he said that we have “initiatives that we have yet to kick off, which is the regionalization of government operations.” I would like to ask the Premier what is meant by that statement.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. The Hon. Premier, Mr. Roland.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It is one of the initiatives I laid out early on in the life of our government as one of those strategic areas. It’s looking at how we operate and the delivery of services in our communities and how they’re delivered from a regional aspect to a community aspect. Looking, for example, at the future of the development of the Northwest Territories when it comes to governance, with the self-government tables happening in those regional bodies, does our delivery fit within that? We haven’t been able to get to that yet. As we work on that initiative, we would be prepared to go through committee with what we’re planning to put together. But there haven’t been terms of reference and a lead Minister or any of that put to that section as of yet.
I thank the Premier for the answer. I’m a little confused. I guess I need to ask the Premier if the intention of this initiative is that it will be a strategic initiative committee, like the other five that are currently in place.
I contacted Members earlier on the strategic initiatives. It was one of the ones highlighted, so it would fall under the strategic initiatives category. We would look at that same sort of development as we go forward. Again, as Members had requested that we look at the makeup of that, that would also fall into that category.
Maybe it’s me this afternoon, but I’m having a really hard time understanding what the Premier is meaning. Perhaps I could ask him to give me a hypothetical example of a change that would be considered regionalization of our services.
Mr. Speaker, the process we are involved with now is some of the work being done, in a sense, by other initiatives; for example, Refocusing Government, looking at the delivery of services from a board and agency perspective, how we align with the departments and are working in those regions, what level of authorities are made at the headquarters versus regional operations and should that change or remain the same or be enhanced or tightened up? In a sense, with that are the accountabilities with that responsibility.
Thank you, Mr. Roland. Final supplementary, Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, and thanks for that answer. I guess I would just like to ask something that’s occurred to me a couple of times as we’ve had various discussions about any number of things. There was quite some time ago a suggestion that perhaps education programs might be changed. For instance, high schools might be brought to a regional centre instead of leaving them in each individual community. Could the Premier comment on that, please?
Mr. Speaker, again, this area hasn’t been brought up to the same working level as the other strategic initiatives. We haven’t got the terms of reference. So that type of thing has not been looked at, at this stage. The Refocusing Government piece is looking at delivery and how we work with boards and agencies, but on the actual program delivery side this piece hasn’t been put into action as of yet. I’ll commit to Members that as we get this piece up and running, we’ll be sitting down with Members to give them what it’s starting to look like and get their input.
Thank you, Mr. Roland. The honourable Member for Sahtu, Mr. Yakeleya.
