The government's corporate capital planning process, or CCP, continues to be a leading concern of the Standing Committee on Governance and Economic Development. The CCP has one capital target with all department projects competing for the available funding. This competition or evaluation process is based upon a primary rating criterion. The criterion prioritizes capital expenditures in the following order, protection of people, protection of assets, protection of the environment, financial investment considerations and program needs or requirements. Each project is then evaluated by a secondary criterion founded on the following factors: scale of impact, severity of impact if the project is not completed, urgency of the project and the ability to mitigate. All the government's capital projects are subject to this funding approach. The evaluation process is done by the Capital Review Committee, which is entirely comprised of deputy ministers.

In their consideration of the CCP, committee members continued to have the following concerns:

1. The prioritization process, which is led by the protection of people and protection of assets, unfairly penalizes less developed and less populated communities. Public sector spending is often the exclusive economic driver in the majority of small communities. A more responsive approach that incorporates a fairer distribution of capital spending for small communities should be adopted.
2. Cost overruns in a number of large projects have impacted upon timelines and funding for other projects.
3. The membership of the Capital Review Committee is comprised in its entirety of deputy ministers. Committee members concluded that the new process moved the decision-making power to the deputy ministers rather than the Ministers, who are elected to represent the interests of the residents of the Northwest Territories.

At the conclusion of the standing committees' review of the 2003-2006 business plans, the Premier made a commitment to review the CCP that would incorporate concerns of the Regular Members. The Standing Committee on Accountability and Oversight reminded the Premier that the Regular Members should be consulted on any proposed changes to the CCP prior to the introduction of the 2003-2004 Main Estimates in February, 2003. This would ensure input from Regular Members is incorporated into the final capital expenditure process prior to the finalization of the government's forthcoming budget. As of the February 5, 2003, the standing committees have not received any correspondence from the Premier's office on this matter.