David Ramsay

Did the Department of Human Resources work with each department in the area of quality assurance to ensure that each department was following through on the human resources procedures and processes that are in place to ensure they weren't contravening any policies, Mr. Chairman?

Mr. Speaker, I’d like to recognize a constituent and all the good work he does in the community in the area of addictions: Mr. Bern Richards.

Mr. Chairman, in the absence of a comprehensive human resource strategy or plan government-wide, I'm just wondering again how the government could make decisions in the area of staffing without a model to follow and how it is that they could just rely on deputy ministers and departments to come back with possible reduction scenarios. That's got to contravene some type of policy. It contravenes good judgment; I know that. But it's got to ring some alarm bells somewhere when we don't even have a comprehensive human resource plan for the future and we're out there hacking and slashing positions...

I’m not going to challenge your direction, Mr. Chairman; however, if the answers were sufficient, we wouldn’t be asking questions in this forum. It’s your prerogative, and perhaps we will ask those types of questions in question period.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I’ll try to keep the question related to the estimates that are before us. The letters are the notification letters that went out to employees.

When we’re talking about the Main Estimates, Mr. Chairman, we’re talking about a reduction in staffing. Fundamental to that was the decision to either send the letters out or not send the letters out. The question I have for the Minister is: what advice did the Department of Human Resources give to the Minister and, in effect, Cabinet to either send the letters out or not send them out? That’s germane to the whole discussion we...

I’m happy to provide some opening comments under the Department of Human Resources. I welcome the Minister and his staff here with us this afternoon.

I do want to ask a number of questions when we get to the detail. One of the things I’m interested in knowing was what advice the Department of Human Resources gave to the government when we were dealing with the notification letters that went out to employees. I’d be very interested to know what the corporate take from HR was on whether or not those notification letters should have gone out in the manner that they did. Some of the blame, I guess...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In relation to the issues in the North Slave campgrounds, I wanted to ask a final question on the reservation system and how it is that the public has to pay to reserve a campsite. I can understand that they pay and they get that offset against their actual camping fees, but from what I see and from what I hear from my constituents, somebody is taking that money, and it’s not going in to offset the camping fees. So I think that’s a cost the department should be incurring.

I’d like to ask the Minister: is there any appetite to phase that type of reservation system out so...

I don’t know if the territorial election had much to do with the operational requirements inside a department — that should be a day-to-day operational thing. And they should be covered off by somebody whether there are changes to personnel or not. What I’d like to ask the Minister is: what is the game plan going forward in terms of consulting the campers in the North Slave region? Has he got a plan for this summer?

Mr. Speaker, I'd like to use my Member's statement today to discuss recent events and decisions made in regard to park operations here in the North Slave region.

Three weeks before the parks and campgrounds were set to open on May 15,, it appeared that ITI was going to implement a new set of rules for seasonal campsites. The allotment was going to change at both Prelude Lake and Reid Lake. The available duration was set to change, as was the pricing.

All of these proposed changes were developed in isolation by ITI. There was no public consultation. There was no consultation with Regular Members...

Mr. Speaker, I want to applaud my colleagues for standing up here today and discussing the principles of this appropriation bill that’s before us. At second reading, I think it’s important that we do that. It’s important that we let the government once again know what our feelings are on the proposed appropriation bill.

Mr. Speaker, I’ve said it before, and I’m going to say a few things here again today that Members have heard me say: this is not our plan. It’s not our budget.

If I can, we’ll go back to just after the election in October when 19 Members recently elected got together to develop a...