Mr. Chairman, I would like to restate that we are still committed, particularly to the Northern Accord negotiations. I would also like to say that one of the prime reasons that we have come to a stalemate here is because of the financial arrangements. I fully agree that we have to be sure that those transfers are of a net benefit to us, rather than a net loss. So yes, we are very cautious of that and as we go along we still have a commitment that a Northern Accord has to complement the claims process as we proceed. Thank you.

Thank you. Page nine. Agreed?

Agreed.

---Agreed

Page 10. Agreed?

Agreed.

---Agreed

Page 11. Mr. Gargan.

Growth In Person Years

Mr. Chairman, there seemed to be an indication by the previous government that there were going to be some financial difficulties ahead unless it allowed only a one per cent growth, or less than one per cent growth, with regard to person years. The government must also be aware that in 1988 I made a motion with regard to a reduction in the person years of 2.5 per cent with another 2.5 per cent the following year. I do not know what the discussions were with regard to the motion I made. I do not know whether or not it was ever discussed. I would like to tell the Government Leader, on the Executive at that time, that it was a reasonable motion.

In 1988, there were approximately 340 vacant positions open. Implementing something like this could have avoided the situation we were in. How did you come up with this? Is it a one per cent person year growth during the four years of our term of office? During the first year that I was in office, I thought there was an eight per cent growth in person years. My motion in 1988 was to reduce it by 2.5 per cent for the first year and 2.5 per cent for the second or last year of our term. I guess this did not happen.

What is the less than one per cent person year growth? Was this during the last year of our term?

Thank you. Madam Government Leader.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. That was for a one-year period. I think the Member would be pleased to note that the reduction by the motion was well received. This has been an ongoing, broad situation which people have asked us to address. In order to accomplish the savings in person years, one of the things is that it is very difficult the way we are structured right now is to go in and say we will take this person year out of this department or that department. This is how we are attempting to do it, by reshaping and putting departments together so that we can accomplish that and more. The concern that the general public has, which is that we have far too many civil servants serving the number of people that we have, and the concern that much of the money is being spent in looking after the administrators, is the fundamental concern that we tried to address in this document. We are attempting to gather together how we are going to do that. I hope we can accomplish that and much more, particularly with the vacancy factors that we do have.

Thank you. Page 11, Mr. Lewis.

Mr. Chairman, I did not catch your eye when we were still on page 10. But it is very brief, if I could. I know we have problems when we refer to what happened in the past government because that is history now. It does not matter much. We do not have a party system here. We have an ongoing, flowing system, and a lot of the same people are still around. We have the same kinds of problems as we had a year ago, and yet a year ago we had identified that it was very important for us to set up a new department of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources. In the Northern Energy Accord we had umpteen briefings on it. We identified transportation as being a key thing for the development of our economy, and in order to give it significance and to give it focus we had to not just state it as a priority but in fact, create a new department to look after developing transportation infrastructure. Also at that time, if you recall, Mr. Chairman, because of the tremendous interest in the last year -- and the Member for Thebacha would recall this very, very clearly -- that safety and the concern for mine safety was such a huge issue that it was felt that we should set up a department for this, to look after safety, the safety of people throughout the Northwest Territories, not only in mines but just safety of our people was so important that we had to set up a department for it. So we in fact created all this government infrastructure in order to meet the program of the government. This is the program. So in order to help the program and to highlight the priorities, this is how we are going to set ourselves up.

Government Lacking In Focus And Vision

So now just a year later we have got a document in front of us just simply to provide a restructuring of transfers of programs, and I wonder really the degree to which we are committed, still, to economic development. We spent four years saying, you know, economic development or privatization or whatever, creating jobs, creating wealth, all these different ploys you could have to create wealth and to reduce the dependency of individuals on government, and we suddenly find that the only thing that matters is government. This government, the way I have seen it over the last few months -- we are completely preoccupied with government, and one of the main recommendations in this report is the reduction of people's reliance and dependence on government. That is the main story of this report: Reduce people's dependence on government. Yet the complete preoccupation of it is with government and the government's service, and so on, and yet with no idea of focus. What is the focus? At least the examples I gave you were attempts to give some sense of priority, to say, "Okay, this is the stuff that people worry about so therefore we will do this." I fail to see that in the documents that we have. The sense of vision, of focus and so on, is just simply, well, it is government but we are going to do government in a different way.

So the fear I have, Mr. Chairman, is that when I look through this page, which is a kind of introduction that gives you a bit of background, the transitional period leading to this report, it bothers me that, right or wrong, at least there was some sense of direction, of focus and so on. What we have got left, it seems to me, does not have that. We do not have a sense of where we are going. In what kinds of ways are we going to create employment opportunities? How are we going to handle a lot of these things, which are ongoing problems for us?

I think it is the wrong solution. We did this in education in 1981-82; we said, "Well, we do not know what the hell we are doing, really, but let us let the communities decide." You know, we just handed it to somebody else. Maybe they would do a better job than we did. And it is no solution just simply to say, "Well, you know, the solution is to give people control over their lives, and so on," and maybe give them an instrument that is no good to them. It is no good handing a program over that is of no use to somebody. Maybe they want something completely different.

So what I am worried about and concerned about is that as we go through this document, we are simply talking about government again, reshaping government. We are not talking, really, about where we are going. What is the vision? How are we going to solve all these problems that, in fact, have been plaguing us for so long, if we do not at least begin to look at more than just structure and form and everything else? It seems to me that is just doing what we did in the past, saying we do not know what to do so we will give it to somebody else to do, and anyway things are rough now. We do not have enough money, so we will let them worry about that too. That is the kind of accusation that may be made unless we can come up with some kind of sense of vision of the kinds of things we could be doing.

I am not talking about huge, expensive programs because so many things can be done which do not necessarily have to cost a lot of money. There are all kinds of things you can do. I do not get that sense after reading the document. I am sure we will have an opportunity to discuss it later on as we go through it page by page so that we can have some sense of vision as to where the government is going in terms of services. I hope we can get some sense of vision as far as the future of our territory is concerned, beyond this basic structural issue. Thank you.

Thank you. Madam Government Leader.

Process For Redirection Of Control And Responsibility

Mr. Chairman, the document is a document that provides the process and some idea on how to get some of the funding so that we can do some of the things the honourable Member is speaking about. It seems to me that we are taking a lot of time on a document that is trying to reshape the government. It is really a process to provide redirection of some of the control and responsibility to the people that are affected by our programs and delivery system. I believe we are attempting to do that by answering the question that a lot of people have in front of them; that is, it is difficult to get access to the government. I believe it can be fixed very quickly and nicely. We can bring the decision-making to where people want it to be made and, at the same time, provide consolidation so that we can save some dollars and redirect these dollars to economic development and other methods. If we keep on going the way we are and do nothing, we can keep spending on exactly what we have with no changes. We can go out and run around in the community, but our resources are limited as to how we can direct that. That is all we are trying to do. There is a preoccupation on government because Members want to talk about it, and I do not think this should be disallowed as a negative thing.

The honourable Member seems to be telling us that people want to discuss this document because we are preoccupied with government. Right now, we have to understand -- and we all know -- that we are too heavily dependent on government. People's concern is that the government does not do the job they want to be done for them. How do we correct this? This is really what we are trying to do.

Thank you. Are there any further comments on page 10? Agreed?

Agreed.

---Agreed

Page 11. Agreed?

Agreed.

---Agreed

Page 12. Agreed?

Agreed.

---Agreed

Page 13. Agreed? Member for Thebacha.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. With respect to page 13, some of the recommendations are on separate appendices to the report. I do not know if it is the intent of the committee to go to the appendices, or just go through them. There are some significant recommendations as a result of the appendices to the report, and I am sure they are of concern to Members, in particular, the review of program and program delivery of legal aid and the Departments of Health and Social Services, and advanced education. The chapter and the appendix include numerous recommendations. Even though I recognize that we stated we would go page by page, some of the appendices are somewhat integrated so I would like to state, for the record, that I, as a Member, have concerns with respect to programs and program delivery areas as well as support services delivery.

Mr. Chairman, recognizing the new rules in place and that the House concludes at six o'clock, I would like to report progress.

Is that a motion?

Yes, I move to report progress.

Thank you. The motion is not debatable. All those in favour? Those opposed? The motion is carried.

---Carried

I will rise and report progress.