Daryl Dolynny

Thank you, Mr. Stewart. Mr. Bouchard.

Thank you, committee. If I can get the Sergeant-at-Arms to please escort the witnesses into the House.

Minister Lafferty, if you’d be kind enough to introduce your witnesses to the House, please.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The New Brunswick Fiscal Transparency and Accountability Act goes as far as to impose a $2,500 penalty on Cabinet Ministers who fail to meet their financial targets.

Given that our Ministers operate in a vacuum, can the Minister indicate what penalties, if any, are imposed on our Ministers who fail to meet their financial targets?

Thank you, Mr. Stewart. Mr. Bouchard.

Before we do so, I’d like to thank our guests here today, Mr. Neudorf, Mr. Guy, Mr. Kalgutkar and, of course, Minister Miltenberger. If I can get the Sergeant-at-Arms to please escort our witnesses out of the Chamber.

Committee, as agreed earlier, we are going to turn our attention now to the capital estimates, Department of Education, Culture and Employment. With that, we’ll turn it over to the Minister to see if he has any witnesses he’d like to bring into the House. Minister Lafferty.

That went too fast. I could barely hear the answer of the Minister. The Minister, during some of the FAA discussions, agreed that within the new act to have a Fiscal Responsibility Policy vetted through the Legislative Assembly process. But it still begs to ask why this policy has not been enacted as a big P policy of government.

Can the Minister indicate why this policy has never been given the same level of attention, and what is the department planning in this regard?

Thank you, Mr. Bouchard. We’ll turn it over to Minister Lafferty.

Thank you, Minister Miltenberger. Does committee agree that there are no further general comments?

In the end, the final report card for the McLeod government on operations spending growth and forecasting is a B minus. Increased inaccuracy in budget forecasting during the life of the 17th greatly affected this grade. Yet, luckily, this grade could have been much worse if not for the controls in place during the new NWT responsibilities following its devolution. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Blake. We’ll go to Minister Lafferty.