Thank you. Mr. Minister.

Mr. Chairman, the problem that I was faced with when we began to move over there was should the people on the ground over there have some management control, or should it be all directed and the strings all pulled from Yellowknife. I made the decision it would be better if the people were controlling it on the ground over in Spain, because of the time difference, because of the difficulty in communication, so on and so forth. Yes, there were financial decisions being made here, largely as a result of a requirement that would be anticipated for Seville or something they had order, or had faxed over and said we would like to have this. I think there was maybe some misunderstanding. The people in Yellowknife might have thought they did not have to report to Seville, that it should be the other way around. Yet, of course, we find out there was some information that the finance person on the ground in Seville did require. So, did we give it a priority? The priority was to support them over there, Mr. Chairman, and perhaps we were a little lax in supporting them with financial data in some cases. Thank you.

Thank you. The Honourable Member for Yellowknife South.

Thank you. Mr. Minister.

Mr. Chairman, well most of the time the fax did not work. There were times when I called over there myself and the phones did not work. It was a bad situation for those people over there and one of the things I was trying to do was not get on their backs too much because at times I could spot that morale was fairly low. I guess in the heat and after having to argue with the Spanish authorities for two or three hours, after having to go through all of these procedures that the staff had to go through to get things done and then have to wait and wait, fighting with Canada about the length of the Imax film because we were not getting as many pulses as we had agreed to -- we were getting three pulses an hour as opposed to four -- there were all of these things that were going on. All those things lead to it being difficult to get the right person and the right time. I had also made it clear to the department that I did not want to see them dropping everything that was going on in the Northwest Territories, just to support Expo, because we had a job to do here as well. At times it was difficult to get a hold of people and difficult to fax information back and forth, or get them on the telephone. There was not a damn thing I could do about it, Mr. Chairman, because I got told many times by the staff that were over there, the Spanish authorities just looked and said "We will get on it as soon as we can." Fast service to them might be a day or a day and a half. There was a lack of communication, but it was not because people were refusing to talk to one another or did not want to send the information, it was just a matter of fact, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you. I guess Murphy's Law was in the works. Mr. Whitford.

Thank you. Mr. Minister. That was a general comment. Mr. Patterson.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, perhaps we should have listened to Gordon Wray's first pronouncement on Expo in Spain. I recall vividly Mr. Wray coming back from a controversial trip to the Canary Islands and maybe there was an oman there because he and his deputy got food poisoning when they were on that visit. Then when they came home they got bad press. Gordon defended the trip in his usual vigorous fashion by saying, "Do not worry, I have saved the Government of the Northwest Territories millions of dollars. I have decided we will not go to Seville."

---Laughter

Unfortunately, he later changed his mind, Mr. Chairman. We should have listened to him the first time and I am sure the present Minister of Economic Development agrees. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Mr. Minister, do you agree?

Mr. Chairman, I am sure Mr. Wray, whose footsteps I have followed in, in not only this project, but in a whole lot of others, had excellent intentions. I have not changed very much in the way the department does business from the way that Mr. Wray had set the plans forward. In this instance, what killed us was being too far down the road at the change of the government to make a decision not to go, and bad forecasting as a result of the numbers that were given to us by the Spanish authorities, by the people who were operating the fair and by the Canadian authorities. As I said, the pulses through the Imax theatre, which we depended upon because they made the film three or four or five minutes longer, so they cut down the number of pulses and that cut down the number of people who were going through the pavilion.

Mr. Chairman, have we learned from it? We have learned enough to tell them when they asked us if we would go to Korea, to say no and I would recommend against any of these expositions in the future most vigorously, even to Mr. Wray. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just want to say that I do not think Mr. Wray had any bad intentions, I think he was making a decision based on the numbers and information which was placed before him and I believe Mr. Wray was acting in good faith. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you. General comments. Mr. Antoine.

Thank you. I wanted to say about Expo that my understanding was to go over there and show the world what we could do. That way the idea was to show them how we do things. We spent a great deal of money doing that. From what I am hearing and from happened there we sure showed them how we do things.

---Laughter

I think it was a heck of a mess, Mr. Minister. I guess one of the ideas to go over there was to see if we could show the people how we do things and maybe attract them to come visit us. Maybe by showing how we do things over there, maybe that is the reason why we do not get any visitors from over there now.

---Laughter

That is the point I am trying to make, Mr. Chairman. We went over there. Some of the people who went over there, my constituents, do not want to talk about it. I do not know why but they do not really want to talk about the experience there.

When I was first getting involved in politics I was the chief and I used to meet with the elders. One of the things they always drilled into me was whenever you are going to do something, you try to best you can. That was the advice I was given and I try to follow that. My advice here to this government is listen to that advice and try the best we can. In this case I do not think that happened because of the money was spent and the way things happened. We certainly did not try the best we can, I do not think, because of the situation we find ourselves in today. These are the comments I wanted to make at this time, Mr. Chairman. Mahsi.

Thank you. I want to apologize to Mr. Arngna'naaq. He had his hand up earlier but I guess I did not write it down. Member for Kivallivik.

Thank you. Mr. Minister.

Mr. Chairman, I am getting a little concerned with the kind of light that people are putting on this exposition. I want to tell you right now that you may be reading into this document from a very precise auditor chartered accountant number cruncher kind of view that our people were over there throwing money away with both hands, steeling, not doing their jobs, and that is not true. Those people were over there representing the Northwest Territories, not very many of them quit and came home, Mr. Chairman, three only. Mr. Chairman, those people were doing their job to the best of their ability, and I do not like the idea that this was a mess. These people represented the Northwest Territories as well as I could have expected them to do it.

What we are talking about here are some internal controls that the Comptroller General of the Government of the Northwest Territories is not happy with, but it should not be considered that this exposition was a mess as far as the Northwest Territories was concerned. I received one complaint from one customer and his wife over the way they were treated in that particular restaurant on that particular day. One complaint. I had nothing but good things said to me by the provinces who were over there and used our facilities, and asked us to cater to the people who they were entertaining. I had nothing but good things said to us by Canada for whom we did a lot of work entertainment wise, et cetera. So, I do not want anyone to think we let the side down. What you are looking at here is a very technical document that says the Comptroller General, with all the might of the Financial Administration Act was not happy with the way we accounted for some of those things over there. That does not mean that our staff were thieves, they were not.

Mr. Chairman, the reason in many instances that the Financial Administration Act was not complied with is because the people could not comply with it. The inventory control system that the Spanish had put on only to take 32 characters. Therefore, there had to be groupings of inventory. The cash registers they supplied us so they could keep track of the sales that were going on so they could ding us for whatever percentage that was theirs, did not work some of the time. It is impossible to keep someone at a cash register in 45 degree heat, you have to switch them off. So, if you switch them off every hour and a half or every hour are you going to count out the float and count it back in again? The people on site made the decisions to do those particular things for very good reasons.

I am getting a little passionate right now, Mr. Chairman, because I do not like the inference that I am hearing that they were lax and did not do the job to the best of their ability. Mr. Chairman, we had 48 people from the Northwest Territories working over there, very little trouble with them. Compared to the exposition that occurred in Vancouver, it was just night and day. They were all trained before they went over there. They all knew what they were getting into. The Arctic College program they all went through trained them exceptionally well, simply because they stayed for so long.

Mr. Chairman, the supervisors, Mr. Ward, had been in private business, had done inventory control, he was an ex-member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, impeccable character, and as I said he had been in private business before. George Ferrand, another person of good reference with a good history and a good record with something like 20 or 30 years. He had been in the business a long time. He knew what inventory control was, he knew what he was doing over there. The people in the restaurant side were experienced, they were not people who were just picked up off the street, it was an experienced restaurateur.

Many of these things you are seeing here, when you look at them in black and white on the paper, they look damning. I will repeat once again that the exposition over there, if you want to say, was a success for us. It put a good light on the Northwest Territories and got us a good reputation. Maybe we did not make any money, well that is fairly obvious. Maybe we lost a lot of money, but we certainly did not lose face and we did not let the Northwest Territories down, and I do not think our staff were pilfering or being irresponsible. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you. The chair accepts no allegations in this House, just as the Speaker accepts to hypothetical correction in the House. Mr. Arngna'naaq.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I do not want to be pressing the Minister for something he had not done, but in addition to the very basic requirements of the Financial Administration Act, there were other management principles that any good businessman would have complied with that the managers did not comply with. I realize the evaluation done here was done by a professional financier manager, but page seven of his evaluation report says, "There were no management information systems." Now which manager does not use an information system? Management reports were not prepared. I am wondering if the Minister had considered that the evaluation of management practices part way through the Expo operation to identify any problems there may have been had been considered or may have been appropriate part way through the exposition in Seville. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you. The honourable Minister.

Mr. Chairman, the information was kept manually. The inventory which had to be counted were the items which were not in the warehouses and those were the items which were on site. There was some manual accounting kept of inventory, sales and so forth. I certainly received, just about every day, a sales report. So, someone had to be keeping some kind of record over there to tell me how much food and liquor was sold, and arts and crafts were sold in a particular day, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.

Thank you. The honourable Member for Kivallivik.