Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I wasn't here, but I heard the Premier had some kind comments about Mr. Patterson and myself concerning the Beatty report. It is nice to hear that. It is the first time I heard my name mentioned with that report for the last two and a half years. It is good to know. I appreciate those comments.

I have a couple of overall observations to make about the Department of the Executive. The Premier should recognize that there are always different philosophies of how you run an administration. Members on the Standing Committee on Finance, many of them, have had some concerns about the communication that has happened between Ministers and Members. They have been concerned about the immense number of priorities and a feeling who about whether the government can handle all of these priorities. It is a very common sense reality that any government who tries to do too much, most of the time, doesn't do anything very well. When we look at the list of priorities and initiatives, some of them are immense. Some of them like reforming the welfare system, the education training strategy, some of them on their own could consume most of the energy of the government.

I think the simplest way to put the concern of the committee is that with 18 months left, the committee feels there should be a handful of major initiatives, five or six, and a commitment to complete those and to do them very well.

Over the past two and a half years there has been a lot of good work, and no one is trying to take away from the government the work that they've done. My concern, as an MLA, is that what I haven't seen and what I think is a very necessary focus. For the Premier to sit down with her Cabinet and say to each Minister you have ten of these initiatives but, realistically, there is one big one you can do and a couple little ones you can do so let's sit down and decide to take some of these initiatives off the table. That is hard, politically, because every one of them has a constituency and every one of them is done for a good reason. But the reality is that with the number of major initiatives that the government has going, I very much doubt you're going to successfully conclude very many of them.

That was, I think, some very constructive advice for the Premier and the Cabinet to consider. I hope it's taken that way. The Standing Committee on Finance has made a very concerted effort during this round to keep the issues away from constituency issues, to keep them away from personalities, and to deal with the major policy issues facing this government. With some of those policy issues there may be some disagreements, and on some of them the government may have very good reasons to come forward with them.

But I think that for many of these issues, both the ordinary Members and the Members of the Standing Committee on Finance and the public should hear the arguments. Some of the recommendations we made, perhaps the government has some very good ideas as to why they're doing what they are, and that's fair ball. I would hope that the government would view the recommendations of the standing committee the same way. I think there's some good ideas in there and I hope they will be considered in a positive sense. I don't think it hurts if there are disagreements. That is what this forum is all about. If the government feels strongly about their way of doing things, say so. Like most Members, I'm quite willing to be convinced. It's in everybody's interest that this government succeeds with these initiatives. So I look forward to this budget debate as just that. A debate, a discussion on policy. If there are differences of opinion, so be it. That's what politics is all about.

When we look at the Beatty report, just to put it into a little perspective. The government has done some good things. I am a strong supporter, as you know, of the Beatty report and very involved in it. Some things they've done and some things that they haven't done that the Beatty reported recommended. A lot of those decisions can become very subjective, that's true. A lot of the style of government is going to depend on what the Premier is comfortable with. So there are no absolute rights and wrongs in all these things. These are observations and, perhaps, there are some things that the government and the Cabinet may want to think about.

For an example, in my opinion anyhow and working with the Beatty group very closely, what there has to be in a government bureaucratic system are checks and balances and creative tension. You need creative tension between the line departments and the central agencies. What Beatty was talking about, and quite rightly, and I think the government was definitely on the right track, the problem with the last government -- which I readily acknowledge -- is that the central agency structure was fragmented. So there were political committees of the Cabinet, each one with a different bureaucratic group supporting them. And that caused problems. We definitely recognize that. The concept is to try to bring together some sort of a structure that will support the Cabinet, that will give some cohesiveness and coherence to government policy making. That's a laudable objective.

A couple of things that the government didn't do that the Beatty report suggested. We had a lot of discussions about the four-pillar approach. That it was very important within the central agencies that you do have these checks and balances and you have creative tension. The concept was that you would really have four equal bureaucratic components serving the government. You would have the office of the Premier, with the principle secretary, the office of the secretary to the Cabinet, the deputy minister of Finance and the Department of Finance, then you would have the secretary to the Financial Management Board. Each one with a different function, all of them working together, but with enough creative tension between those particular roles that everything and all policy making had a thorough analysis from different perspectives.

Also, the thought of the Beatty group was that though there would be a centralized support system for Cabinet, that there would be Cabinet committees. There is a problem with everything essentially going through Cabinet or finance through FMB, though it sounds on the surface that everything has a full vetting. The reality is because the time constraints of Cabinet Ministers, because of the number of things on the agenda, it's very difficult to look at them in a Cabinet meeting and look at the political ramifications, to look at the financial ramifications with FMB, to look at the specialized policy area fall-out from decision making. The reason that you would have, for instance, a political strategy committee -- still served by Mr. Alvarez's shop -- is that you would actually ensure that the political ramifications of policies would be looked at on their own.

So what has happened here, what I see as a good first step but it wasn't completed. Essentially, because the Department of Finance by bringing the Comptroller General, bringing in the accounting function into FMBS, is that the Department of Finance has essentially been stripped down. It's no longer one of the pillars. Because the principle secretary to the Premier who is also an exceedingly capable person, doesn't really have any formal responsibilities. Essentially, what he does now, temporarily as deputy minister of Justice, is an advisor. But without some kind of a structure around him, he doesn't really plug anywhere into the structure.

I think the people you have are all very capable, talented people. I've worked for years with Mr. Voytilla, Mr. Alvarez is a hard-working, very smart guy, and everybody is doing a good job. They are trying their best to do a good job. But I really think the structure now is unwieldy. It's over-centralized, it doesn't have all the checks and balances in it, and the feeling of committee Members is perhaps one of the reasons for some of the communication problems. The hope is that the Premier will have a look at it and read through what the report has to say, and perhaps glean some ways to approach it to make the system a little less rigid, a little more open to political debate among the Ministers, and a little bit more able to carry on that tension between line deputy ministers and central agencies. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.