Daryl Dolynny

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

II.

Conduct a thorough review of the accountability framework

According to the Auditor General’s report, the current accountability framework leaves the director with little control over the day-to-day operations for which he is ultimately responsible under the act. While the director authorizes child protection workers to exercise many of his duties and make decisions on his behalf, these workers are employed by the regional authorities and report to managers who are not accountable either to the department or the director for child and family services delivered in...

Thank you, Madam Chair. My questions have to do with the electronic records and document management system. According to the revised budget that we originally passed back in March of last year, the budget for that whole amount of document management was about $341,000 if my math is correct, which means we only spent about $19,000 out of that amount, which is a paltry amount of money. Now we’ve carried this over again.

Can we get an explanation why very little of that money was actually spent and why we’re seeing it as a carry-over? Thank you.

I appreciate the Minister going through that list here. Would I assume that at this point we would become barrier-free for complete public access, or are there other phases that we should be expecting or is this a one time? Thank you.

Thank you. So how many, I guess for clarity, just to understand the scope of the project, we’re putting a couple of automatic doors here in the Legislative Assembly, removing some glass and this is going to be almost $100,000. Am I correct in that assumption? Thank you.

Again, one final question. I mean, again, we’re looking at an appropriation here of a little under $1.2 million. Once this appropriation is approved, can the Minister assure us that that is a project that will be complete, that there will be no more further asks on that highway realignment?

Madam Chair, I have no more further general comments. Thank you.

Driving on that road recently, there were a number of boulders that I saw on the road that actually fell from some of the escarpments as the road was being cut through a lot of narrow passageway, and at that point in time there was a bunch of red pontoons around it, but there were a substantial size of boulders here. Has there been a full safety check on this road so that, again, it’s safe to drive because, again, these boulders looked fairly dangerous if one was to run into one.

So can the Minister elaborate? Has there been any one specific area of success? You know, we’re getting better projects? Are there more specifics to that or better estimates? Are we getting better control of our contractors, compliance with timelines? Can we maybe elaborate as to… I’m trying to foster what are those success issues here so that we can look at analyzing if we can use that in other areas of the government. Thank you.

With the fact that we allowed light traffic, and I received that in a confirmation from the department here. Because we opened ourselves to light traffic on that road, some experts are believing that we actually caused damage to that road by opening up too early. That is going to potentially cost us money in the long run because of our haste to try to open it up under a superficial timeline, which was possibly created by the department. Did that early opening cause issues that we’re going to see come back to us in terms of added costs?

Thank you, Madam Chair. I’d like to welcome the Minister and department here today. I have just a kind of an opening general comment only because, as we become better at public accounts as some of the Members here on this side of the House, the whole issue of tangible capital assets and how we depreciate those assets as we prepare for the upcoming fall here, we see changes in what has not been spent according to the budget. We are looking now at those appropriations that are kind of a carry-forward for infrastructure.

My opening question is: How is depreciation now calculated with these...