Daryl Dolynny

Again, the confusion on this file in terms of when these are going to be activating from private to consignment. To my question which still remains, there is going to be a significant shift happening in September of 2015, in terms of the overall model, 50 percent of our population, 50 percent of our inventory goes from private to consignment. What will the department do in order to make this seamless so that they can at least communicate that change to Members?

Mr. Chair, just so I’m clear before I leave this activity, is that we know under current FAM policy that the department, under the guidance of the Minister or deputy minister, was allowed to move up to $250,000 of unallocated, unused funds, funded positions, and move them to another activity without having to get the proper appropriation of the House. Was this activity done in the last fiscal year? Is that reflected at all in the increased potentially we are seeing in this category over and above main estimates? Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Does committee agree?

Thank you, Madam Chair. I appreciate having the ability to come back to this Liquor Revolving Fund. I apologize. Earlier I was ahead of my questions here.

I have to say with a degree of trepidation here, I’m quite confused with this category in terms of how this is being evaluated and the discrepancies, knowing that we’ve gone from a private to a consignment model. I’ve tried to follow the margins, the dollars, the increase in agents’ commissions and, again, in looking at a note regarding the net revenue amounts being mentioned in the notes. Would the department agree to maybe having an interim...

With these vacancies, which sounds like it’s around the corporate average of 10 percent, and I’m assuming these are funded positions, I guess to the question, do those monies remain in that activity or has the department used those monies in other facets during the course of the year? Or is this money allocated for these positions? Do they stay within the category of wages and benefits?

Mr. Speaker, I do appreciate the Minister’s comments here, but it appears that we’re still moving very slowly on this serious issue.

We can only assume that hiring the Child Welfare League to help the GNWT with the action plan and the numerous and new enhanced activities that we’ve heard and been proposed will cost considerable money. Yet it appears that no new additional resources have been used or put forth in the budget, which suggests failure.

Can the Minister indicate how realistic is it that his department is able to accomplish all this with no new investment? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I appreciate the details on the disbursements. If these amounts of monies, again because we collect the money, we rebate the portion to the federal government, so the bulk of that money stays within the GNWT. It sounds like we’re paying this money quarterly. Where does this money sit in our books in terms of as it’s waiting for these quarterly disbursements and are we getting any interest on that money? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I’d like to follow up to a response earlier today to some of my general comments with respect to active positions. The fact remains that the numbers have not changed from fiscal 2014 to the proposed budget of 265 total employees, and if I look at the disbursement of jobs per allocation of regional allocation, nothing has changed. Everything has stayed the same. There may have been transfers in and out, but the actual numbers are still whole.

Again, if my math is correct, this increase for this category, as I said earlier, is 7.7 percent, and we heard from the deputy...

So, we’re at 50 percent on that question.

According to the department’s Building Stronger Families Action Plan, in response to the OAG report, it states on page 7 that a forum of directors of social programs will be responsible for implementation.

Can the Minister indicate why are not the assistant directors, in conjunction with the director, responsible for implementing the action plan? Why the watered down approach in response to such a serious issue? Thank you.

I’m sensing very tempered, cool, not warm waters on the response to this question. I’m just going to leave it as is.

I see opportunity. I see opportunity for some groundwork to look at our most vulnerable, our working poor. This is a great opportunity. I see that the department can do some groundwork so that when we look at the transition opportunities into the 18th Assembly, this Assembly would be known historically for laying the foundation. That’s all I’m asking and I’ll leave it at that.

My next question on this category has to do with the significant decrease in the amount of net fiscal...