Floyd Roland

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Madam Speaker, with the branch being extended about working together, I am always willing to work with the Members of this Assembly on the rules that we use. In fact, as a result of the questioning and some of the confusion about what applies in the guidelines that are used, I intend to and have talked with my Cabinet colleagues and intend to strengthen section 302 of the FAM document to make it formal, that the communication be done in writing instead of being in the area of consulting. Consulting is a number of things; where it’s a discussion in the hall, in a...

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Madam Speaker, the formal process of reporting to this Assembly is through a number of bills. For example, if projects change between one department from funding allocated to another, there’s a list of interdepartmental transfer activities that is tabled in this House. For the year end where we have to carry projects over into the new fiscal year, we have to come back to the House for the approvals to carry those projects over to a new year. Those are the formal processes that we have in place. For programs that change in a year from one capital program to...

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Madam Speaker, I would take this information, I will check into it to see what may be done. Since all of these employees have started working already, it may be a bit difficult, but I will look into it and see what information we have and I will provide that to the Member. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Madam Speaker, I am unaware of the changes that impact the seasonal firefighters as the Member has stated. The payroll changes that we have implemented across the Territories sees a delay or an advance being paid to all employees and then a portion of those being drawn back. I am not aware of the details of how that would specifically affect the firefighters, so I will have to get that information. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Madam Speaker, once again, the Member initially started saying, “in his opinion,” but again he has clearly stated not just now about the Finance Minister but Cabinet has circumvented the rules. I believe that’s inaccurate. We have laid down the specific situation in this House to the public about the situation. There may be feelings of certain Members that they don’t like the result of what happened, that we’ve circumvented the rules, we have broken the rules that are in place, I don’t believe we have done that and I look forward to your decision on this. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I am pleased to announce that the GNWT and the Northwest Territories Teachers' Association have negotiated and ratified a new three-year collective agreement.

This new agreement will improve the competitiveness of the GNWT in recruiting and retaining teachers and administrators, while also focusing attention on key issues such as aboriginal languages.

The new agreement will result in a restructuring of the teachers' pay grid over three years to provide more consistency. The minimum pay increase will be three percent. Additionally, employees with more experience and...

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I wish to table the following document entitled Public Accounts of the Government of the Northwest Territories Interim Report for the Year Ended March 31, 2005.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Madam Speaker, I think over a number of years the department has made changes in its process of how it does things as a result of concerns being raised in the House. We have made a number of changes and as I’d committed to this process I’m hearing the concerns here and looking at the document and seeing already where we can strengthen that. Again, I’ll provide that to the Members and see what input they want on it. Some Members would probably like to sit beside me at the FMB table and say yes or no to certain projects. Unfortunately, we won’t get to that level...

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Madam Speaker, the information that we use or the changes we use, we do inform Members of the changes that have occurred. In this particular case, the item came back to this House requesting the permission to make the change. So when you look at the process, we followed the letter of the law. We’ve followed the process in place and, in fact, I believe Members were aware that this was occurring prior to the day before, because a Member had been quoted in the paper as being supportive of this initiative. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Madam Speaker, as the exercise we went through, one of the ways we report capital carryover is through the supplementary process that’s reported in this House for lapses of projects that just have not got off the ground and have been dropped. We will work on getting that information together. Thank you.