Daryl Dolynny

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I’d again like to welcome the Minister and department here today regarding the supplementary appropriations of infrastructure before us. Really there is one line entry that I’d like to do some general comments on, which probably is the bulk of the appropriation for us for $40 million, which is the adjustment in cash flow for the Inuvik-Tuk highway.

As mentioned in the Minister’s opening comments, they’re to accommodate an accelerated construction schedule. This has also been discussed a couple times here in this sitting, so I don’t want to get into the details. We’ve heard...

So now we are dealing with whole numbers. Again, as we just heard, if both appropriations go forward without a hitch and they’re approved, we have just heard that we are right up to the line of the $275 million probably as of today. Once these appropriations get approved, I’m assuming it’s a triggering mechanism and the monkey flips the switch and the bank accounts are withdrawn.

We also heard from the department here today that we would be inching close to the debt limit of the $275 million “near the end of our fiscal year.” Our fiscal year, I believe, does not end until March 31, 2015. So we...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I think Ms. Bisaro has set the tone and I do agree with the Minister, we do have a process for 99 percent of the stuff that we do and we’ve got an optional process for the other 1 percent. I think that’s what the issue is here. If we do have a process, we need to follow that process.

I believe when it comes to spending money there are no shades of gray, there’s just white or black, especially dealing with public funds. If it’s our own piggybank or our own money then that’s a different story. But when it comes to public funds, I believe there is no option. The rules are...

Of course, we didn’t hear a date here from the Minister, so I guess we’ll leave it to the imagination. It was sometime between August 25th and September 26th which is the announcement of this amount of money being authorized or promised by Cabinet without any appropriation. I’ll leave it at that. If the Minister doesn’t want to answer the question, that’s fine. Maybe other Members might get back on that and try to pry that information out.

The question is: How pressing was the issue? Why were things deemed so fast moving that we had to circumvent conventional wisdom of a process that we all...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I am listening to the Minister’s replies not only to my opening general comments, I also heard the Minister reply to many other colleagues here today. I want to hone in on certain key terminology that was used by the Minister. The Minister is very good at sticking to a set of scripts, and he’s very attuned to his nomenclature wording. But he uses the term “there was a pressing value before Cabinet,” and he uses the terminology of “things were moving very fast,” and I’m going to come to those two terms again in just a minute here. But ideally, what we have before committee...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. This is at the root of my problem here today. As I said earlier, the sharing of information within a consensus government is critical, yet it appears that we have a division of this government which apparently acts above such law of the land when it comes to transparency and accountability to its people.

Will the Minister commit to the sharing, with committee, and hopefully with the public someday, the current findings and past audit findings within the context of corporate risk management? Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, we did get some information here, but I do have another question to gather a little bit more statistics.

Another important measure of success of the implementation of audit recommendations by management is addressing these so-called outstanding high risks.

Can the Minister indicate to the House how many of these recommendations were reported in the 2013-2014 fiscal year and what percentage of these recommendations were actually implemented? Thank you.

Thank you, Deputy Minister Neudorf. Committee, I would like to draw your attention to the gallery today. We have with us joining our proceedings this afternoon, Ms. Gloria Ann Campbell from Tulita, who is with the Chief Albert Wright School looking after our Pages today.

---Applause

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to introduce to you and through you, as we’ve heard today, we have a number of recipients for the cultural and heritage awards. Thank you for sharing your incredible stories. We heard a lot of that today in the House. Of course, Mayor Furlong, it’s always a pleasure to have you with us here. Again, congratulations on your long journey as a cancer survivor.

I have two other people here who I’d like to recognize, one who I worked with for a number of years, Ms. Nicole Garbutt. It was a pleasure working with you for many years in the business sector. Many times in...

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Minister Miltenberger.