Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In my Member’s statement today I talked about addressing the addictions problem, and perhaps, maybe, we could actually gain ground this particular Assembly and deal with this particular issue. Now, I don’t suspect any Assembly – although it would be nice – or any government ever to fully deal with that particular problem, but the important thing is never to surrender to allow addictions to happen in the manner that it is, as well as the fact of how little it’s actually been happening.
I highlighted the focus of the mandate of a particular department as well as this government, and what is little known by the public is that departments are given specific mandates by the Premier and ordered as marching orders. To shed a little light on that, that’s never really discussed publicly or else we would have known in advance at the beginning of the 16th Assembly about the supplementary health benefits change, as well as a few others.
So my particular question to the Premier will be: when will the development of departmental mandates be seen, will there be engagement with Members on those developments, and when do we expect some type of discussion on those particular mandates that individual departments will get the marching orders on that Ministers will have to comply with? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. The honourable Premier, Mr. McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m anticipating that once we assign portfolios, that we’ll also be providing mandate letters to each of the Ministers and that will be reflected in the business planning process that we do through this Legislative Assembly. Thank you.
Thank you. The Premier didn’t address the question about specific mandates and I highlighted the point about supplementary health benefits. That was a Cabinet decision mandate handed out to the department to fulfill. It didn’t have Regular Members involved in that type of decision.
Suggesting that we wait for the business plans for these holistic mandates is great, but before you put any bologna on the table, it’s the decisions made in Cabinet that are the ones that are the real meat and potatoes of the government’s marching orders. Those are the types of mandates I’d like to find out.
When will the Premier be issuing specific mandates to departments as to the objectives created in Cabinet for that direction? I’m not talking about the Caucus feel good statements; I’m talking about the ones that get down to the nuts and bolts and direction of government. Thank you.
Thank you. We normally wait until we go through our strategic planning exercise with the whole Caucus where we, as a government of the 17th Assembly, identify our vision, we identify our priorities and then we develop our goals and objectives. At that point we’ll be giving specific marching orders to the departments. Thank you.
Thank you. As I said, in the 16th Assembly the Department of Health was given the mandate to start hacking away at supplementary health benefits, and in no way that was ever discussed in a Caucus discussion and in no way that was developed in Caucus visioning. But yet, the Department of Health was marching to the orders given by the Premier of the day. That’s the concern I specifically have here. So is the Premier saying here today, without any doubt, that there are no mandates issued to any of the departments, and furthermore, is he also saying that all departmental mandates will be developed with all Members? Thank you.
In the 16th Assembly we set up a protocol which we all agreed to and we all agreed that there would be no surprises. There was nothing that was identified in the protocol that was going to be approved by the 16th Assembly that would flow into the 17th Assembly. We’ve all agreed that we’re going to get together and set the vision and strategy for the 17th Assembly, and we are committed to that process and we will follow that process. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The Member for Range Lake, Mr. Dolynny.
