Thank you Mr. Chairman. I am going to ask Liz Snider to respond to that specific question. I just want to make a comment in regard to appointments made by this Cabinet, made by myself as a Premier.

When I was elected, when we sat down as a Cabinet for the first time, the Ministers and I agreed that appointments such as the principle secretary to cabinet, who would be the deputy minister, secretary to cabinet, including the appointments of executive assistants down to executive secretaries, would be done together. It was new. It is the first time that this type of thing was done by agreement.

It is the perogative of the Premier to appoint all senior managers in government, deputy ministers, principle secretary, secretary to cabinet, chief of staff now that is created. In this case, I have shared that responsibility and that decision with the Cabinet. In turn, they have shared with me the people that they have asked to take on the jobs of being their executive assistants and executive secretaries.

So I want that to be on the record, because the Member made a comment about that, and he should know better. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Kakfwi. Ms. Snider.

Thank you, Ms. Snider. Mr. Krutko.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I just want to make it clear for the record that I did not make any statement that meant the Premier mentioned, that my comments on appointments and what not. I did not make reference to that in my statement. That could have been done by someone else, but, for the record, I did not mention that. My question was more about the human resources, the Affirmative Action Policy and the Staff Retention Policy. So I want to make sure that that is on the record.

One of the other areas that I have raised with the Executive, it has been some time since we have had these positions. They were done away with in the 13th Assembly, the whole area of regional directors in the different regions, where they were the person that was the coordinator of the departments in the different regions.

Yet we are talking about regional capacity. We are talking about different regional self-government negotiations and developments that are taking place in our different regions. I am wondering, has the department considered the possibility or reinstating these positions, or something like that in the different regions? So that we can have someone in the regions that we can go directly to deal with issues that may be tri-partite in nature, where we are dealing with different departments or the Department of Municipal and Community Affairs and what not?

So has the department looked at reinstating that, considering the government has made reference to the Opening Address in the business plans, where it does talk about regional capacity building and what not. Has the department considered looking at that?

Thank you, Mr. Krutko. Mr. Kakfwi.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I believe the idea of looking at regional capacity building and redefining of regions is a great idea. It is time to do it, and so far we have said that this is something that we want to do. We have the endorsement of the Legislature and we have made a commitment to work with the Standing Committee on Accountability and Oversight to develop that idea.

Hopefully, the credit will be shared between this government and the committee in a balanced way, so we can move on to working with the aboriginal leaders and regional institutions that need to engage on it.

The idea of having one person, such as the former regional director position, work with this government from these regions is one idea. There are a number of other ideas that will come forward. So it is not discarded. It is one of them, but it will be there for sure. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Kakfwi. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have a question about the Minister's opening comments, but before that, in response to questions from Mr. Miltenberger, the Premier launched into a discussion about the recent motion in the House on the Public Service Commission, and talked about how Cabinet was prepared to bring information forward to Inuvik and share that.

I have to say, what sort of commitment is there, really, for involvement, if the campaign has already started to say that it is too expensive, because that is certainly what it sounded like to me.

The Premier mentioned the cost in the Yukon. Well, you may want to do some research, because the cost in Manitoba is millions of dollars less than it is in the Yukon. There is an incredible range of costs that you could get into with something like this. I do not think that starting the campaign now to say that it is too expensive is a realistic way to say we are working together to examine our priorities.

For instance, in the Yukon, $2 million of the $10 million is for staff development, not just $250,000 like we have put into staff development, and $2 million of their $10 million goes into Workers' Compensation Board payments. Those are the costs that we are going to have in any case, so they are not necessarily costs that are in excess from running a Public Service Commission. In fact, if you look at the Financial Management Board Secretariat, under labour relations and compensation services, without those two expenses, which amount to $4 million, we are already budgeting $8.5 million.

I think we need to go into this with an open mind and recognize that one of the primary reasons for wanting to push for this was to make sure that we had an independent agency, one that the public had confidence in, that was not subject to political pressure and one that would follow the political direction of this Legislature in implementing its policies, but would not be subject to the whims of an individual politician.

Mr. Chairman, I had not intended to go into that, but I had to respond to the Premier's comments.

In his opening comments, he refers to one initiative which is not in the budget, so I would like to just follow up on that before we get to detail. The rest of my concerns, I can follow up there. In his opening comments, on page 8, he announces that the Government of the NWT is committed to funding $333,000, or one third of the 2000-2001 cost of $1 million, for aboriginal government participation in the Intergovernmental Forum.

I am just wondering if the government has looked at whether or not this could perhaps put us in a situation where the argument could now be made, and it is one that we had resisted until now, that this government bears some responsibility for the implementation costs of self-government. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Mr. Kakfwi.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The monies that we are committing to provide are so that the Intergovernmental Forum, which we have just recently agreed to establish, will have the resources necessary. So the federal government and the Government of the NWT and the aboriginal governments can engage in the forum with sufficient resources to make it workable, in effect. Do not hold me to those words, but the governments need to provide some resources so this process and this forum can be effective.

It does not reflect on the self-government initiatives that are taking place at the self-government negotiating tables. Just for clarification on the points earlier, I know the Yukon Government actually shows in its books Public Service Commission, $10 million a year. What I said is, I believe the Public Service Commission in the Yukon requires between $7 million to $8 million. That was my own estimate based on what little I know of it. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Kakfwi. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The reason I am asking about the funding for the Intergovernmental Forum is just it seems to be on the same one third, two thirds formula that had been used previously to fund constitutional discussions. One of the arguments there that the government said that, when agreeing to a territorial government contribution to constitutional discussions, was that they covered everybody in the Territories.

We have long maintained that the federal government has a fiduciary responsibility to fund the setting in place of aboriginal governments, which is something that the resourcing of which we are talking about at this table for Intergovernmental Forum. That is why I am wondering, have we at least made the case in offering this funding? Have we taken the step of making sure that we reiterate that this government does not or should not have to bear the cost of implementation, and that in fact it is a fiduciary responsibility of the federal government? Where they opened the door, by precedent here, to now falling into the trap that the federal government could have been setting here to say we do have some responsibility? Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Mr. Kakfwi.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The federal government is providing two thirds of the funding and we are providing a third. We are one of three parties involved in this process. The agenda is emerging at length on very specific things such as the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline, revenue sharing, and devolution. Three issues that are of fundamental importance to this government, and to the public of the Northwest Territories. So there are no rights per se at the table here. It is in large part the agenda is items that will impact on the self-sufficiency and the economy of the Northwest Territories. So it is in our interest to support such a forum, and to make sure it is adequately resourced. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Kakfwi. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just want to be clear. I support the Intergovernmental Forum and the process there, and certainly hope that we are able to reach an agreement with our partners at the table on moving some of those controls of the resources and some of the monies north, instead of continually seeing the royalties headed south.

My concern really is one that we have not just by accident put ourselves in a situation where three or four years down the road, the federal government is going to be able to come back and say well, you accept your responsibility here, that was a precedent, and therefore we are going to, as they have been insisting for a number of years, your government is going to have to pick up some of the costs for implementation. They are not on record as saying they will not consider implementing self-government unless this government kicks in already.

I just want to know that this government is making sure that we are protecting ourselves from that sort of situation, and would hope that the Premier would, with the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, take a look at the situation and perhaps, if necessary, put in writing to the federal Minister just that stipulation to our provision of the funding in this situation. I am not speaking against the funding, I just want to make sure we do not get stuck holding the bag at the end of the day because of missing something. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Mr. Kakfwi.

Yes, we will do that. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Kakfwi. Detail, Commissioner's office. Department of the Executive, page 2-13, operations expense, total operations expense, $184,000, agreed?

Page 2-15, Minister's office, operations expense, total operations expense, $3,463,000. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just when we were reviewing the Department of the Executive on March 21st, the interim appropriation, I had asked the Premier about the number of executive assistants upstairs, and on page 202 of Hansard at the time, he said that if the Premier were to give up the Resources, Wildlife & Economic Development portfolio, there would be no need to have an executive assistant assigned to the office.

I notice that he has passed on that responsibility to Minister Handley. I know that there are nine offices up there in the Cabinet side. I have walked through them and I have not seen an office empty yet since that transfer. I was just wondering if I could get a bit of an outline as to what has happened please?

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Ms. Snider.