Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to comment very briefly on the motion, in two respects. First, the financial one and then second, just on the functioning of the Department of Resources, Wildlife and Economic Development.
First of all, I do not have any problem with doing audits as long as we have a very clear purpose for doing the audits. I am sure the Auditor General has a very busy schedule and he is going to have the same kind of concern. If we are doing an audit, then we seriously want to make some changes. We want to do something differently.
In the case of the Department of Resources, Wildlife and Economic Development, this department was only created in 1997. At that time, there was a lot of consultation that took place with environmental groups, with industry, with aboriginal groups, with government, and certainly a lot of consultation in this House. Many of these issues were dealt with then. How do we resolve issues from an environmental perspective and from a development perspective? At that time, it was only three years ago, after much discussion, there seemed to have been an agreement that this was a reasonable way to go.
In doing the amalgamation, there was $5 million saved upfront, basically by putting two departments together, and a little wee one called Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources. There was a $5 million saving. Then, part way through the process, there was an additional $5 million saving. This enabled $10 million to be saved by reducing these three departments and putting them into one. That is $10 million that then can be spent on housing, on education, or on other things that are a higher priority than building more bureaucracies.
I think it is important, given the messages we have heard ever since we have been here, about the need to have our priorities right. I just have trouble, in my mind, coming to grips with spending, maybe not $10 million, but spending a lot of money to create two departments now. I do not think we need two departments. If that is the objective, to try to create two, then we are treading into an area that just leads to more bureaucracy, more departments, and so on.
So that is a concern on the financial side. Let us keep our money in the areas that are of priority to us. On the financial side, let us not spend money creating bureaucracies.
Now, when it comes to working with environmental issues and development issues, I was the deputy minister responsible for Renewable Resources at a time when there were two other departments, Economic Development and Tourism, and Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources, whose focus was on development. Mine was on protection, on conservation and so on. It was not terribly functional. I found a lot of banging of heads, a lot of disagreements because, in the bureaucracy, you tended to have people spending their time taking positions. That is what happens when you separate these two issues.
Putting them together caused the people whose responsibility is development and production to also take into consideration environmental issues. It caused the environmental people and the conservation people to also take into consideration production issues. That side of it caused the department to be a much better functioning place.
We can go now and ask somebody from outside to come in, from the Auditor's office, to come and do a comprehensive audit. I do not know what he will measure it against. But as the Premier said, I think he will tell us to do whatever you want. You have two issues here. You could deal with them with one department. You could deal with them in two departments. You could deal with them in three departments, if you want. I am not sure we would really get that much further ahead.
I am afraid of where this may take us, though, particularly from a financial perspective, given the need to be tremendously careful with the limited resources we have here. I have a little bit of trouble understanding what the real purpose is here. What is the auditor going to measure it against? That is something we have to measure here, not an auditor. Thank you.