Daryl Dolynny

Thank you, Mr. Loutitt, and again I congratulate your folks on doing that. Committee, general comments. I have Ms. Bisaro.

Thank you, Madam Chair. It gives me great pleasure to finally get to this part of the budget, which has been talked about here in the media for a number of weeks at the end of August and early part of September when residents were notified that the government took a lead action in trying to mitigate the low water expenditures or low water issue at Snare and Bluefish and took it upon themselves to give a bit of a bird’s eye view of what was about to come here today. This has been big in the making and I’m glad we are finally having an ability to talk about this appropriation in its full...

The report also indicates that enforcement offers what is called server training and conducts these courses free of charge to all NWT licence holders. This is voluntary, but the Liquor Board can order a business to attend at their discretion. Interestingly, for the past two years of this report, three communities, Fort Simpson, Inuvik and Norman Wells, had zero server training participants, yet once again it appears that in this 2014-15 report, 67 percent of the participants targeted and voluntarily forced to attend were from Yellowknife.

So once again, can the Minister indicate why the...

I appreciate the offer of the Minister, but the Minister clearly is aware. the sands of the hour glass are dissipating quite quickly. What he’s asking for in terms of number of days left is not feasible, it’s not going to happen in time. This is going to fall on deaf ears once again. It will be picked up by the 18th Assembly, hopefully, and through some stewardship that we are going to become better people at doing this job.

This is not the responsibility of a Member. This is not the responsibility of a committee to ask the government to provide information. It should be provided willingly...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. With the multiple number of reports being tabled in the past four session days, and no doubt right up to the bell later this week, I think Cabinet is hoping that Members will be a little too busy to follow up on all the plethora of paperwork before us. But there is one tabled document, 314-17(5), that was tabled on September 30, 2015, to which I’d like to ask the Minister responsible some questions.

The Minister of Finance tabled the NWT Liquor Licensing Board and Liquor Enforcement Board’s 61st Annual Report, 2014-2015, and within this report it indicates the number of...

Does the landlord receive an accounting of the money being spent in terms of, again, back to the proof of performance? Do we supply receipts as to contractor payments or of that nature? By which way does the contractor provide that information either through us, who is possibly doing our work for us, back to the landlord to make sure that we actually are following through to the T and I that we have in relationship to this agreement.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In keeping with my continuing evaluation of the current administration, today I wish to talk about our growth in the GNWT workforce.

It is a known fact that managing the size of government is an important component of fiscal performance. Compensation and benefits for government’s departments, boards and agencies account for approximately 40 percent of the GNWT’s spending on operations. With the 2015-2016 average costs of compensation and benefits for a government employee at more than $100,000 per year, we should give this some attention today.

The GNWT workforce, which...

Thank you, Madam Chair. I appreciate the answer. It was more the accounting aspect of the question. I guess the real question is: By what mechanism do we have to guarantee that those monies that we have are given to us, $2.5 million in total, will be spent at the YK Centre building itself and not be used for any other project or projects within our Public Works and Services? Again, by what way are we able to guarantee that this money is being spent where the money was given to?

Thank you, Madam Chair. When is the anticipated date of completion for these renovations pursuant to the $1.5 million we have before us today? Thank you.

Now the story is starting to be a little bit clearer. So we’ve got $1 million that’s destined to be spent next year, we’re trying to spend $1.5 million this year for tenant improvements. This is money that we’ve had in our public coffers since May of 2014. Is this money accruing any type of interest? Where is it parked exactly? Thank you.