Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, this is my first opportunity to present the budget of the reorganized Financial Management Board Secretariat since it was created eight months ago. The basic restructuring that was approved in May, has been accomplished in a short space of time.

The Financial Management Board Secretariat is now responsible to support the Financial Management Board in all aspects of the internal management of the government's financial, human and information resources. The secretariat provides centralized services to the total government for revenue and general accounting, budgeting, comptrollership, program and organizational design, also internal audit, program evaluation, information management, employee compensation, human resource planning and labour relations.

Mr. Chairman, besides keeping up with the normal responsibilities for coordinating budgets, running financial systems, doing audits and managing labour relations, the secretariat has been assigned some large initiatives.

These initiatives include completing and implementing an informatics strategy, updating and revising the government's audit policy, creating a central evaluation service, developing program and organizational design standards, developing a government human resource planning strategy, including a review of the affirmative action policy and negotiating three new collective agreements. In addition, there are the labour relations aspects of community transfer, the implementation of a new job evaluation system, the coordination of a review of government's capital standards and criteria and implementing substantive improvements to internal controls throughout government.

Mr. Chairman, this is an ambitious work plan and we are planning to do this with almost no increase in resources.

The total proposed budget for 1994-95 is $43.011 million and 215.5 person years. This represents an increase of $4.944 million, and an actual decrease of 2.4 person years over the 1993-94 main estimates.

Mr. Chairman, the few areas where we are asking for additional funding are related to collective agreement provisions or by other factors outside our control. The major areas of increase are:

1. Vacation travel assistance, where an increase of $3.714 million is being requested to meet the provisions of collective agreements;

2. The NWT power support program, where an increase of $385,000 is being requested in relation to the impact of the electricity component of the user-pay component of the staff housing strategy on the power support program.

3. Medical travel assistance to employees, where an increase of $619,000 is primarily due to a delay in the transfer of the administration of the employee medical travel assistance program to the Department of Health.

Mr. Chairman, in preparing this budget, a number of internal reallocations were made to realign resources in accordance with priorities and objectives. This reflects my belief that much can be accomplished without always seeking new money. In the few cases where new funding is required, it is only requested after a thorough examination of all possible internal resources.

Mr. Chairman, I am now at your disposal to answer Members' questions and reply to their concerns. Thank you.