Robert Bouchard

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m sure the Minister has been briefed about the meeting. At that meeting the fishers asked for the subsidy. The department indicated the price is going to go up. The current fishers are asking for that price to be actually subsidized to that level right now so they can see how the industry will react to that type of price currently.

Is the Minister willing to commit to looking at that type of subsidy to increase the price for fishers on the Great Slave Lake? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The Minister indicated he had a meeting previously with the federal Minister.

Can the Minister indicate to me when the next planned meeting or FPT on this type of situation would be coming up? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Again, I guess we’re being handcuffed and pressured into just approving this $800,000 expenditure, because Cabinet has put it in a supplementary estimate that we have had limited time to review, have had limited time to have that discussion. I mean, we expressed our concerns last week, but with limited input and time to do anything about it. We’re talking about positions and we talked about positions and we talked about the budgets going up every year, and now we’re going to add another five positions to it. Never mind all the discussions I’ve talked about in this House about decentralization...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As you are well aware, Hay River has a long history as being the NWT fishing industry capital. It’s exciting to hear that this government is investing $1.3 million through its Economic Opportunities Strategy to this industry.

Last week, along with members of the NWT Fisherman’s Federation, I was glad to hear a plan go forward on how we’re going to revitalize this industry and how we are going to implement a new fishing plant in the community of Hay River. This is a great renewable resource that we have in the Northwest Territories. We need to take full advantage of it...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I’d just like to bring up a couple of other issues. The difficulty that I’m having with this process is the timing of it. Like I indicated, the fact that this communication report was done in November, I guess committee has had some discussion with the department about it, and I think it was brought up on Friday about the supplementary exercises we are going through and some of the short notices we are getting on the reviews and the process and the fact that all of a sudden we hear now this money, these five positions are being added to the budget.

It seems like a very...

Then I guess I’ve got a question about this communication report that was done. We’ve been given the information, as far as this report was done, in November. So, it should have gone through our regular budgeting process.

Why cannot we, as a government, get a report in November and have it ready for our March implementation of funding in the March review? Now we’re back here on June 1st looking at something that we don’t really have full direction on, we haven’t had full discretion about it, we haven’t had a business planning process to go through. I guess, why does it take so long to get that...

I’m trying to get clarification. I think on Ms. Bisaro’s question, the Minister indicated it was going to be added to our ongoing costs and you just indicated to me that it wouldn’t be added to our ongoing cost, but be part of ongoing devolution money. Can I get more detail? How are these positions going to be funded after devolution money has been expended completely?

So if we’re using Yellowknife as the base and also using the calculations of the community, it could be the price in Yellowknife went down or the price of the community went up or vice versa I guess. Is that the factor or, I guess, how do we keep that stable in the fact that the greater the northern living allowance adjustment to a community, the cost to the community may have gone up, but if Yellowknife was affected then everybody gets affected?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I’m just wondering if we’re able to get that information or is it available on a public website where we can get the new northern allowance adjustments or the new allowances and which communities went up and which communities went down.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Throughout this document we have quite a few items that have to deal with the adjustment to the Collective Agreement. Can the Minister maybe give me a little more explanation why these numbers weren’t available during our regular process of budgeting? I guess it’s spent throughout the document. So, if the Minister could just explain to us why this is a supplementary estimate as opposed to the regular budget process.