Thank you, Mr. Chairman. When I initially asked about the knowledge management strategy, the Minister indicated that they would take sort of a cursory or peripheral look at the PeopleSoft system.

Given the concerns raised in this House, which I think are symptomatic of a wide-spread concern and user dissatisfaction, would the Minister commit to ensuring that whoever does this knowledge management strategy will take a cross sectional survey sample of how well the system is working, so we can get some on the ground, grass roots kind of feedback?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Yes, we have done post-implementation interviews. I think as we go on, we will continue to see user views and take those very seriously. There is often a problem when users are used to one kind of system and they are busy with their regular jobs and they have to get used to a new system. It takes a little while to work through all the bugs. Thank you.

Well, I think the Minister is bailing on the Titanic on this one, but have at her. So when you table this knowledge management strategy and we get to look at that, there will be a section that speaks specifically to PeopleSoft?

I will defer that one, Mr. Chairman, to Mr. Voytilla.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Could the Minister indicate in terms of the budget, when did we realize that the costs on this project were going south? Given the concern we have had in this House today, we are $1 million short for adult education programs. That is education we could use. We are scrambling around like mad to find money for summer employment programs. What happened? The $2 million question is what happened? What assurances do we have that we will avoid this kind of thing with your tangible capital assets? Again, is there any kind of comfort that can be given to us as legislators looking for every penny, so that we can avoid this in the future? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think it was probably in August or September when the government realized there were going to be substantial cost overruns. At that point, it was necessary to make a decision to carry on or quit the project. Due to the amount of investment already in it, and because of the belief that it is a good system, the decision was made to carry on.

A lot of the cost overruns resulted from the failure of an agreement for each government to provide staff resources to work through the system. That was not done, I guess mainly on the Nunavut side. As a result, we had to hire contractors, which probably tripled the cost to continue on with this project. Thank you.

If I could sort of summarize. So you are saying it is Nunavut's fault? Is that what you are telling us? That now that they are not here, we can blame them? Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, no, I do not want to try and dump all the blame on Nunavut. I think we have to jointly have responsibility for it. A big part of the problem has to be shared by both governments. If one of the governments did not provide the human resources that was expected, then it cost us money to hire contractors.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, the Government of Nunavut obviously bailed early on this particular system. I hope the Minister is right. The other question is, I hope the Minister is right that this, in fact, will be the program they say it will be without any more costs.

My question to the Minister is, as we look at moving ahead on some of these other initiatives with the Financial Management Board Secretariat, tangible capital assets, setting up of pension operations, can the Minister give us some comfort that we are going to be a little bit more on target? It pains me deeply to have to come and find $2 million cost overruns in a service department. I have to go back, along with all my colleagues, to all our communities and tell the people that we do not have money for adult education. We do not have enough money for housing. But we found the money to have the cost overruns in headquarters for a service department. Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, like the Member, I also hope that we are right. I hope that a year from now you can judge me and judge that we did manage this well. But I guess the best thing I can give you right now is my own assurance that we will do everything we can to prevent any cost overruns.

I should also mention that a couple of the other examples the Member referred to, both the tangible capital assets and the pension issues, are issues that were faced. We do not have a lot of choice. We have to get on with them. The superannuation issue is one that was decided by the federal government, in that we are no longer to be part of their system.

In the case of the tangible capital assets, that is coming from the Auditor General and the Public Sector Accounting Board's recommendations to him that we have to move this way. Some things we have to do. We do not have a lot of control over whether or not we do them. We will do our best to manage within the estimates that are given to us. Having said that, it is not 100 percent predictable either. Thank you.

Just to follow up from Mr. Miltenberger, I think we all agree that tangible capital assets, pension takeover...these are things that we have been forced into. Our concern is not with the PSABs recommendations that we implement tangible capital assets. Our concerns are that we implement them in the most cost-effective and efficient manner. The systems that we choose to set up to run these programs are of concern to the Members. Thank you.