Mr. Chairman, I am very much impressed with the number of communities which are interested. We have about 50 per cent of the communities in the Northwest Territories in one area or the other that are very interested in taking over additional responsibilities in the various areas. They are not all the same, some people are interested in Social Services and other people are interested in DPW, there are different areas of interest. I am very impressed with the number of people.

I would like us to move much more quickly and be able to deliver much more quickly but what we are finding is that it may be from the fact that there is a high interest that people are being much more critical about how they go into it because they do not want to be in a position where they take something over and are not able to deliver it. There are much more avid requests for information and details than we thought before. However, I am impressed with that because I think people will not do a good job unless they request those details because they are being very critical about what is provided to them and what it really means. I am not dismayed about the fact that I would have liked to have seen more concrete transfers at this time. Discussion and consultation is taking place so that once the transfer has been concluded everyone will feel much better that they have received all of the information and made the right decision.

Agreed.

---Agreed

Audit Bureau

Mr. Chairman, is this the department which is the watchdog for all government expenditures to ensure there is no embezzlement?

Mr. Chairman, they do internal audits if there is a specific request. For example, the Audit Bureau has presently concluded an audit of the Baffin Regional Council and their operations, and they are also involved in a special audit in Cambridge Bay. It can be done internally or by special request if there is concern that things are not financially sound.

Mr. Chairman, I would like to ask the Minister whether this department is the one which caught some people stealing from Social Services. Is this the department which discovered this or was it done by a separate audit?

Mr. Chairman, yes, they were brought in.

Agreed.

---Agreed

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I did want to ask if the Government Leader would see whether it is possible for the Audit Bureau to be able to go in to do audits in every department on a scheduled basis. Fraud was detected because of a Minister's persistence that the Audit Bureau go into a particular office to do an audit, but it could have went on because the system itself did not catch it. I think this Audit Bureau could detect much more if it was requested to go into those departments. What Minister will request the Audit Bureau to go into their departments to audit for fear of what it would result in? I would like to see whether a schedule could be formulated so we have comfort in knowing that audits are being done in the government. This would avoid Members from requesting comprehensive audits such as we did on Health, which came out as a very critical report. It would avoid some of that pressure on Members to request that audits be done. I recall when Mr. Todd was an ordinary Member, he vehemently requested an audit on the Power Corporation. It would avoid these types of requests. If we had comfort that the Audit Bureau was doing these audits then we, as Members, would not be requesting additional audits, thus resulting in less expenditure of money because we have a department in there to do it already. Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, I wholeheartedly agree. This is one area, I believe, that in looking at the functional analysis of what it can do, we should have addressed quite some time ago. This section has a lot of work to do and I certainly agree with the Member. We are addressing that in terms of putting this particular area to work. Thank you.

Agreed.

---Agreed

Regional Operations

Agreed.

---Agreed

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Could we have a breakdown once again with regard to grants and contributions on regional operations? The other comment that I wanted to make to the Government Leader is that there have been concerns expressed by different Members with respect to the lack of travel of regional directors because of the time of restraint we are in. We recognize that but is there going to be additional funding identified in order to visit the regional

communities? Is funding going to be increased in the future? Thank you.