Thank you, Mr. Chairman. On my immediate right is Mr. Voytilla, the deputy minister of the FMBS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

No.

Yes, I certainly would. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate my colleague's comments and Mr. Miltenberger's comments, too. Talking as the Minister responsible for the FMBS, I think it would be fair to say that perhaps it had an overbearing influence, if you want, on the way in which government did business. That's my contention. It didn't allow the managers to manage, it didn't allow the people at the field and regional level to make decisions and, to some extent, it still doesn't. We have to work very, very hard to make sure that happens, because we want to make sure that those who are closer to the problems and the issues have the capacity to make the decisions in terms of what action has to be taken and what money has to be spent.

That's just a general statement in response to why we're doing what we're doing. I would suggest to you that over the years -- I don't know whether Mr. Voytilla would agree with me or not because we haven't discussed this -- perhaps the FMBS has grown much larger than it had to be and has made people less accountable, in a sense, because it was all centralized in one particular core group of people. The overall principle that I've operated on all my life is to empower people, give people the fiscal authority to make decisions. That's where we're heading.

In doing that -- and we've only started that the last year or so -- it's not without its bumps. It has its ups and downs because we've gone from doing this to doing this. In the process, there may be some glitches in it. However, overall, when I talk to people in the field, superintendents and others, there is an enthusiasm for the approach we're taking. There is some apprehension, as my colleague has pointed out, about the resources necessary. To be frank, we are saying to people that you have to do it within the existing resources which, on occasion, makes it difficult. We're examining those on a one-to-one basis.

When we talk about the accounting being complicated, I think that with all governments, the larger we get, the more difficult we tend to make it. I fundamentally come from the, as they say, KISS method -- that's "keep it simple, stupid." That's not meant as disrespect to anybody around this table, it just happens to be the way it's explained. We need to find a way to make things less complicated, more streamlined and more efficient. It's fair to say that we have to take some responsibility for making it cumbersome and, in many cases, duplicated. So, we're trying to work very quickly to try and correct that. But, again, we've been 12 months into this exercise and Mr. Voytilla and his staff have had a tremendous workload just trying to pull all the budgets together, meet some of the new political realities that we deal with in this House and develop a strategy to bring in a balanced budget. So it's been a long, hard year for them, and we're perhaps not as far along on that issue as we'd like to be. But certainly we are going to work aggressively there, empower people, put the responsibility where it belongs and, I think more importantly, put the spending authority where it belongs. That is sort of the intent of this direction that we're taking.

I believe Mr. Miltenberger mentioned the communications strategy. We're excited about that. We think the digital communications strategy that is currently out for RFP, and will close on July 29th, will put this country and the Northwest Territories onto the information highway. Hopefully, it will be a second-to-none, state-of-the-art system that comes forward. Whatever entrepreneurial or coalition of joint ventures or created partnerships, as I keep talking about, if that comes forward, we're excited and optimistic about that. That will bring about, as I said in my opening comments, distance health, distance education and, I believe -- and finally I've been convinced over the last 12 months --it will bring about significant savings on the expenditure side which is going through the roof; that's in the social envelope. So we are very optimistic about that.

When you are on the cutting edge of a new industry, it's not going to be ... You know, I can't predict how it's going to go, because we're on the cutting edge of the information highway, Mr. Chairman, and this project, if it all goes well and if we get the right kind of interest from the private sector, will put us in the national arena, where, as I said in my budget statement, we can have an elder from Clyde River sell his carvings to a buyer in Tokyo; where we can have a kid in school in Deline talking to kids in Ireland; where a nurse in Whale Cove can talk to the doctor with a machine and show the X-ray to a doctor in Montreal. So we are very excited about this. We don't know quite how it's going to unfold, but it certainly will, as I said, bring this territory and, of course, the two new territories into the 21 st century with a bang. Thank you.

All my life, even when I was in government and when I was in the private sector, I have fundamentally believed that you have to put responsibility and management, et cetera, where the issues are, and this job gives me the unique opportunity to be able to do that. I see this, and I am almost -- I don't know if obsessed is the correct word -- but I certainly see it as a fundamental change in the way we do government. I think it is a cost-saving measure at the end of the day and I want to assure my colleague that this is going to be priority within the department. I suppose, if I had to envision my good friend, Mr. Voytilla, and his colleagues, three years from now, I would see them as a very small but very effective and influential secretariat. Thank you.

Agreed.

---Agreed

Line By Line

Directorate

Agreed.

---Agreed

Human Resource Management

Agreed.

--- Agreed

Government Accounting

Agreed.

--- Agreed

Audit, Budgeting And Evaluation

Agreed.

--- Agreed