David Ramsay

Mr. Speaker, I’d like to speak today about the budget reduction exercise currently underway by the government.

I’m very concerned over the way the government is handling the communication effort on the reduction and, eventually, the reinvestment strategy and the fear that this is causing our employees.

What I’ve heard from the public and Members of this House was that we should thoroughly examine our spending through zero-based budgeting exercises which would analyze our spending so we could take some corrective action on where we spend our dollars. Had this been done, we would have had solid...

I’m very encouraged to hear that from the Minister today. Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the Premier for his comments. As long as we’re not leaving any stone unturned, I suppose, and we’re looking at everything. That would be good. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. In looking at possible reductions, we’ve got the Department of Intergovernmental Relations, Aboriginal Affairs and the Department of Human Resources. Would the government not be wise to look at having one deputy minister of the Executive to oversee the operations of those departments, and not necessarily a deputy minister for each of those departments and everything else associated with that?

I’d like to thank the Minister of Finance, FMBS and the Premier for being here this afternoon to discuss the interim appropriation. I just have a few comments.

I don’t want to go over everything. I agree with much of what my colleagues have been saying, especially when it comes to energy efficiency and the capital planning process, which I certainly would endorse needs to be addressed. I also would strongly back up the opinion of my colleagues that Regular Members need to be included in the discussion on revamping the capital acquisition or infrastructure acquisition planning process here in...

Mr. Speaker, I’m having a little bit of trouble understanding the logic where the government tells departments that they’re going to be okay hiring on a case-by-case basis in an effort to achieve reductions. We don’t have to wait until April 1st to figure that out; that happened last week. That exercise is already happening. It’s at play in the government departments. The instruction was given by the government without consulting the Regular Members.

I’d like to again ask the Premier: what specific instructions have been given to the departments?

Mr. Speaker, I want to pick up where I left off with my questions to the Premier in regard to hiring. I just don’t want people out there in the public wasting their time applying to positions that we’re not deeming appropriate or where they’re not going to fit into our strategic initiatives, like I heard the Premier say earlier.

I’d like to ask the Premier: what positions currently are not deemed appropriate or fitting into our strategic initiatives, so that people aren’t applying for them?

They’re making that determination on what’s going to be necessary six months from now or required six months from now, in isolation, because we haven’t had that level of discussion on what’s going to be a requirement six months from now. Mr. Speaker, I do get calls from constituents who are trying to apply for positions with the G.N.W.T. I want to ask the Premier: when was the Premier going to let Members of the House know that the policy has changed in terms of hiring employees for the government of the Northwest Territories? When were they going to let us know that?

Mr. Speaker, my questions today are for the Premier. It gets back to my Member’s statement, where I was talking about the reduction exercises currently underway and the information that’s flowing through to departments and not necessarily getting through to the Regular Members on this side of the House.

I’ve become aware of one department where they are doing hiring on a case-by-case basis. It’s not necessarily a hiring freeze but a case-by-case basis, and hiring has to be approved by the deputy minister. It’s a big change, Mr. Speaker.

I’d like to ask the Premier if that is a government-wide...

Mr. Chairman, just following up on my colleague Ms. Bisaro’s questions. If you look at the infrastructure upgrades and server replacements, currently the government has a policy whereby if the equipment is reaching the end of five years — an evergreen policy, I think, is how they refer to it — then that equipment is considered for replacement.

We haven't had that level of discussion yet. Maybe an exercise in looking at saving some money is extending the evergreen maybe six, maybe seven years before we look at replacement. Why would we go ahead with the upgrades without having made that...