Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am pleased to present the 1993-94 main estimates for the Department of Personnel.

The main thrust of the department over the next year will be the implementation of the long-term staff housing strategy. I announced a number of changes on March 11 in response to the input from the public and Members of this Legislature. I am confident that these amendments, which will see the strategy phased in over a longer period of time, will satisfy the needs of tenants without compromising the overall objectives of the strategy.

Mr. Chairman, the department will be actively working to resolve the pay equity issue. Pay equity means providing equal pay to all staff who are doing work of equal value. As mentioned earlier in this session, we are anxious to come to an agreement with the union. However, talks have recently broken off with no conclusion.

The government's affirmative action program remains a priority with aboriginal people occupying 2,065 of the 6,048 government positions as of December 1992. This represents 34.1 per cent of the total number of positions. This is a slight growth over 1991-92 in spite of downsizing and consolidation efforts which have reduced the total number of available government jobs. The Department of Personnel has a total of 114 employees of which 41 are aboriginal representing 36 per cent of the total department.

In other affirmative action categories, the numbers of women in management jobs have increased from 82 to 90 over the course of the year. Women now represent 22.6 per cent of all managers in the organization. Women also hold 232 jobs in non-traditional occupations representing 14.6 per cent of the total numbers in that category. The number of disabled employees has remained steady at 25. Long-term northerners who have lived over half of their lives in the NWT occupy 314 jobs representing 5.2 per cent of the government work force.

The 1993-94 budget for Personnel has been reduced from $26.4 million to $26.313 million for an overall reduction of $87,000. The main changes to the budget include: the department's travel budget was decreased by $418,000 as part of the government's overall restraint measures; the medical travel budget was reduced by $500,000 as a result of the consolidation of all medical travel in the Department of Health; airfare increases, which resulted in the addition of $332,000 for the vacation travel assistance, medical travel assistance and ultimate removal budgets; growth in divisional boards of education increase the department's budget by $139,000 to provide benefits and services for new teachers; the decentralization initiative required the department to provide specialized planning and support services in preparation for the transfer of positions to communities. One person year and funding for salary and O and M in the amount of $72,000 was added to the budget to do this important work; the government was required to pay GST on vacation travel benefits for all employees and this increased the budget by $193,000.

Finally, Mr. Chairman, we will be expanding our 1992 annual report to the Legislative Assembly to include more detail as requested by the Standing Committee on Finance and this Legislature during the 1992-93 budget review. Thank you.