Wendy Bisaro

Thanks to the Minister and I guess I thought it was a rather larger little section than that, only four people. My recollection is that the budget was something like $800,000, but I could stand to be corrected on that.

So, I guess I’d like to know from the Minister, then, in the area of program design, and I presume that goes to making things more efficient and presumably saving us money, which is what this office was intended to do, what role does the Program Review Office play in program design and increasing efficiency in program services? Thank you.

With the Finance Minister’s statement that there will be no new taxes, we are not going to have a new revenue source in this next budget year. Somehow we have to reduce our expenditures. As was noted by the Finance Minister both during the budget consultation held in Yellowknife last fall and in today’s budget address, our current financial situation is not sustainable. The question is: What are we going to do to make it sustainable?

Thank you, Madam Chair. I move that we report progress.

---Carried

To the issue of the standing offer agreement for program design, it’s to provide assistance with the design of new programs and re-design of current programs, so I’m still struggling to understand why this is not the job of the Program Review Office.

So, to the Minister, I’d like to know, in the same vein, what is the role of the Program Review Office in monitoring and evaluation of departments and/or their programs and services. I thought that’s why we established the Program Review Office in the first place. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are addressed to the Minister of Finance and I’d like to put some questions to him on the Program Review Office.

We got notification this last week that the Program Review Office had established two standing offer agreements. They were for program monitoring and evaluation services and for program design. I look at the Finance website under the Program Review Office and it says, “The office was established to help advance the goal of effective and efficient government by conducting a systematic review of government programs and services.” The other...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Well, the budget is out and I look forward to discussing and debating it over the next five weeks. We as a government, as a Legislature, are stretching our resources further and further and I’m becoming increasingly concerned that we will overextend and end up in financial hot water.

In the fall we approved many millions of dollars for fire season costs and to avoid a low water rider on our power bills, some $60 million in total. That was not money in the bank. Unfortunately, we don’t have a savings account to draw on, a rainy day account that the Minister of Education...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, colleagues, welcome back. It’s good to see everyone here in the House after our Christmas break. I’m sure we’re all ready to roll up our sleeves and get to work on the budget and legislation which we’ll see come before us in the next few weeks.

Mr. Speaker, there are so many things which need to be talked about, I had to choose from a long list for my statement today, but I decided to start with a long-standing, seemingly never-ending issue, that of income support.

An inquiry recently came to my office. It was a plea for help to assist a constituent with an...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. To the Minister, I was going to ask what changes are coming. I guess I will wait with bated breath for them to come to committee.

I would like to know, when the Minister says they are constantly looking at things, are they looking at things in total? I suspect they are looking at an individual policy in isolation.

Have they considered the total impact of a change on the whole of the policies within their department, or do they simply look at one policy at a time? Thank you.

I’m somewhat perplexed by the Minister’s answer, but I accept that he has provided us with some rationale. That the Registered Retirement Savings Plan is considered a rainy day fund, I would like to suggest that it’s going to be raining awfully hard when people reach retirement age, and if they have no pension from their work, which many of our residents do not, then it’s going to be raining very hard. I can’t accept that rationale.

I’d like to ask the Minister, I mentioned a contradiction in my statement, and in terms of contradictions it is the requirement of the department basically that the...

I have to ask, is it the goal of the Minister and the Department of Education, Culture and Employment to force our people into poverty or to lift them out of it? When was the last time ECE considered our income support policies, all of them, together? Is the contradiction in policy recognized by the Minister and the department, and if so, why has it not been corrected? Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I will have questions for the Minister at a later time.