Bob McLeod

We do have collective agreements that we are bound to follow, but generally in some of the areas that the Member has mentioned, the deputy heads are designated as the ones that can make the call. I think for the most part we try to be flexible, depending on operational requirements and I guess the severity of the situation. We do try to provide guidelines, but guidelines don’t always apply in every situation. That’s generally the way we operate. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Chairman, it has been a while since we met with Mr. Pollard. I believe it was early in the summer of 2010. Indirectly we understand that he is still working on his report and that as soon as he completes it, he will be communicating it to the Minister of Indian Affairs. I expect that at some point after that we may or may not see the report, depending on whether that is something the federal government feels they can utilize. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am not sure what he means by conflated, but there was $3 million for two years in the EPI and we used that to pay down the rate riders and this resulted in the commercial rates decreasing in the thermal communities. Thank you.

It’s not a marketing corporation. It’s the NWT Fishermen’s Federation. So it’s made up of fishermen that fish in Great Slave Lake and Kakisa and Tathlina Lake. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Yes, I would, Mr. Chairman. I am pleased to present the 2011-2012 main estimates for the Department of Industry, Tourism and Investment.

The department’s mandate is to promote economic self-sufficiency through responsible development of the Northwest Territories natural resources and the promotion of tourism, trade, investment, business and manufacturing to create a prosperous, diverse and sustainable economy for the benefit of all residents. Through this mandate, we continue to support the commitment of our government that all residents of the Northwest Territories must have the opportunity to...

Thank you. Yes, that is given a focus on a departmental level. It is part of our energy priorities framework and that is something that is ongoing and we have invested on things to reduce energy for the GNWT like a wood pellet boiler for the Legislative Assembly, a wood pellet boiler in Fort Simpson, the Capital Asset Retrofit Fund under an energy efficiency for public housing. So those are some of the areas that we’ve been focusing on through the committee. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We’ll present the statistics on a departmental basis.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think we have to change our terminology. We are still calling it a backlog, but we recognize that every pay cycle it adds to our backlog. But from the original, when we consolidated Human Resources into one department and all the files were turned over, I believe there was something like 2,500 transactions that were backlogged. There probably has been another 2,600 transactions, what we call adding to our workload, but having said that, we have been able to deal with all of that and what we are still calling a backlog is about 936 now, so we are going to change our...

Mr. Chairman, whenever we meet with the mining industry or specific proponents of individual mining projects, most of the projects require two things to become feasible. It is usually some sort of road or cheaper power. Every opportunity we have, we try to facilitate. With regards to the Tlicho, we haven’t met with NICO. They expressed their concern with regards to a road, any road. The department had set aside money for a road, some sort of an all-weather road or at least improving the existing winter road. They were waiting for some response from the Tlicho government. I think they are still...

I don’t have a specific number but they do have technical engineers and specialists and policy people that work in this area and we rely on them for most of the detailed technical work with regard to hydro.