Wendy Bisaro

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. I can be short and I thank the Minister for his answer. I would like to know from the Minister if he can estimate for me and this House what he estimates the cost in the 2015-16 budget year of these two standing offer agreements. Thank you.

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.

Thanks to the Minister, but I have to frown on what I heard the Minister say, that it’s okay to penalize people for good planning. It’s okay to tell people that you’ve managed to save, you’ve got this money, use it up before we give you any money to help you out, especially when somebody has been successful and they’ve encountered a bit of a rough patch. They don’t need a lot of money, they need some money, but let’s make them destitute and then the government will look after them.

I would like to ask the Minister, he mentioned that there are some changes that are coming. I would like to know...