Mr. Patterson, are you agreed?

General Comments

Yes, Mr. Chairman, I would like to make a general comment to just reinforce what the chairman of the Standing Committee on Finance said.

Mr. Chairman, sometimes I wonder what we are doing here. The reason I say that, Mr. Chairman, is that if the Standing Committee on Finance and the Legislative Assembly do not get real estimates of the actual costs that are going to be incurred by departments in areas such as medical travel, social assistance, child welfare, forest fire fighting, if we do not have that before us when we take weeks and days and hours to review the main estimates, then what is the purpose of this exercise. I think the bottom line of these $26 million in supps...There are some very big numbers here and the big numbers tell us that the estimates given to the previous Legislative Assembly were way out, were out by millions of dollars.

Mr. Chairman, I acknowledge that in some cases there is good reason and where the reason is price, and inflation, and forced growth, then that is an entirely appropriate use of the supplementary estimate. But when the reason is poor planning, negligence, then we have to ask why we go through the exercise of approving these numbers when we know they may not be real.

Mr. Chairman, this is my main problem with the exercise; I think the people of the Northwest Territories are entitled to know what these areas are actually going to cost. It appears that even when we were reviewing this year's main estimates for 1995-96 there was a lot of information that the government had, since it had approved special warrants in early January, that the previous year's estimates, which we are now revealing today, were much too low in many areas of spending. Had we known that when we reviewed those main estimates, the Standing Committee on Finance could have incorporated that information into their report and I think we might have been much more critical of the estimates of some departments, had we known that these numbers were going to change so dramatically through this supplementary appropriation.

So, Mr. Chairman, I don't want to criticize the Minister of Finance. It's a terrible job, and he probably would agree that it is annoying when departments can't accurately forecast their costs. I'm sure it's a frustration to the Minister of Finance, as much as it is to Members of the Standing Committee on Finance. So I don't want to particularly criticize the Minister of Finance in whom I have great confidence. But I think we all ought to note, particularly for the benefit of Ministers and deputy ministers, that we would like to know what the real costs are going to be. And this supp, in many areas, suggests that departments are still very lax in accurately estimating those costs.

Now I understand that there's a new regime in place whereby deputy ministers' performances are evaluated on the basis of financial management. I think as we go through these supps and find out where the estimates are quite at variance from what we see in the supplementary estimates. We should be able to make some judgements about the performance of deputies and directors of finance in these departments. Because where there's no good reason in terms of price, inflation, forced growth, then it indicates that the planning process is faulty. And I would even go as far as to say that the House, if not the Minister of Finance, has been mislead by the estimates put forward by the department.

So I think it's important to emphasize that the purpose of budgeting is to get as realistic a picture of costs of operating in the Northwest Territories as possible. And this supp shows that there have been some bad mistakes made in the estimates. So, with those general comments, Mr. Chairman, I look forward to going over the detail. Thank you.

Thank you. Any further general comments? Shall we go into detail?

Agreed.

---Agreed

Line By Line

Legislative Assembly

Thank you. Supplementary Appropriation Act, No. 2, 1994-95. On page 6, the department is Legislative Assembly, operations and maintenance. Office of the Clerk, not previously authorized, $234,000. Agreed?

Agreed.

---Agreed

Qujannamiik. Total department, not previously authorized, $234,000.

Agreed.

---Agreed

Department Of Executive

Thank you. Next page, Executive, operations and maintenance, directorate, not previously authorized, $52,000.

Agreed.

---Agreed

Qujannamiik. Human resource management, not previously authorized, $697,000.

Agreed.

---Agreed

Thank you. Page 8, audit and evaluation, not previously authorized, negative $33,000. Agreed?

Agreed.

---Agreed

Thank you. Mr. Antoine.

Mr. Chairman, are we on page 8?

Yes, page 8.

Is that where you're at?

Yes, Mr. Antoine, we are on page 8, audit and evaluation, not previously authorized, negative $33,000. This is where we're at. Mr. Antoine.

I had no questions on that one.

Thank you. Total department, $716,000. Agreed?

Agreed.

---Agreed

Department Of Finance

Thank you. Page 9, Department of Finance, operations and maintenance, revenue and assets management, not previously authorized, $1.2 million. Agreed?

Agreed.

---Agreed