Floyd Roland

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.

Yes, Mr. Chairman. I am here to introduce Bill 1, Supplementary Appropriation Act, No. 1, 2005-2006. This bill requests authority for additional appropriations of $21.342 million for operations expenditures and $32.002 million for capital investment expenditures in the 2005-06 fiscal year.

Major items included in this request for operations expenditures are as follows:

$16.1 million for the Department of Executive, Financial Management Board Secretariat, for the resources associated with the human resource amalgamation. Of this amount, $14.8 million was transferred from other departments;

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Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, the $400,000 will be contributed by the health authority. It comes out of a surplus that they have in their budget, and our retention policy with surplus is that the health board gets to keep 50 percent of it and the rest gets returned to us. So out of their surplus they are going to pay for the extra portion. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, the rules are as he’s read them and as I’ve worked with where transfer has occurred and adjustment has happened. What is happening at this point now is we’re requesting that transfer to happen and that adjustment to be made. The transfer has not happened at this point, adjustment has not happened at this point, the money is still identified under the Territorial Treatment Centre for Yellowknife, but changes to the plan are being brought forward now for the money to be changed to a different project. It’s the Territorial Treatment Centre, but in a...

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I move, seconded by the honourable Member for Thebacha, that Bill 1, Supplementary Appropriation Act, No. 1, 2005-2006, be read for the first time. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, the services that Ms. Lee has talked about as available here in Yellowknife are territorial services. So they are of the nature that is provided to all residents of the Territories, whether other communities have to travel here to see those specialists. That is a common occurrence within the Northwest Territories. The benefit of having the largest centre is that more services are available here and other residents from across the Territories have to travel here. So it’s a practice that is already done and exercised on a daily basis throughout the...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I think we just have to look back a couple of years at an incident that is very similar in the nature of what happened and it did, as well, cause an uproar in a number of other communities. When the young offenders’ facilities were moved from their existing location, they were identified in the capital plan and were to be possibly rebuilt in Hay River. At that point a decision was made by the department to proceed on a different lateral and saw the facilities being split and moved to other locations. The young offenders ended up being part of the...

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Madam Speaker, I think in this arena and on the floor of this House we would be silly to say that decisions made in this House were not political ones. That is the nature of the environment we are in and decisions are made based on departments bringing forward substantiation for it. As for changing the rules to only limit $500,000 for being lapsed or carried over and lapsing the rest, we’d find ourselves in the situation we are today. As the year ended, that money would have lapsed. We would have to come forward; the departments would have to come forward for...