David Ramsay

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I agree wholeheartedly with Ms. Lee and her line of questioning on this. Having been my first time through this budget process, we didn’t have the benefit of going through the business planning cycle before we went through the draft mains; but, as a new Member, it’s very confusing. I found a lot of unanswered questions. The term “other expenses” is fairly open to interpretation.

Two of the things I’d like to see come out of this exercise and maybe budgets in the future, I’d like to see -- and I spoke of this in the House yesterday -- the travel budget broken out by...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thanks, Mr. Minister, for the response. I guess we could do that, we could start asking each department what the HR component is in their department. So I will ask you, Mr. Minister, for the Department of Executive, maybe we could get some figures in terms of what the HR component is in his department. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I would now like to provide the committee’s report on the Financial Management Board Secretariat.

The committee met with the chairman of the Financial Management Board on February 18, 2004, to review the draft 2004-2005 main estimates for the Financial Management Board Secretariat, FMBS.

FMBS is proposing a $518,000 increase in operations expenses from the 2003-2004 main estimates. This is primarily due to forced growth in salaries and benefits and the power subsidy program, which is partially offset by expenditure reductions and the transfer of the staff housing...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I move that this committee recommends that the government investigate the feasibility of establishing a human resource service centre.

Thank you, Ms. Melhorn. Mr. Hawkins.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Ms. Lee.

We are now on page 3-17, Bureau of Statistics, operations expense, total operations expense, $728,000. Ms. Lee.

Thank you, Ms. Lee. Mr. Minister.

Thank you, Ms. Lee. Mr. Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. Mr. Minister.