Mr. Speaker, each Minister is responsible for the department. They each have to be able to justify and defend and rationalize any projects that come forward. If a Minister has a disagreement on a particular project with their deputy, then they would have to sort that out between them. I assume that the Minister is the person in charge, the person who has to account for that department, and will make the final decision.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Your final supplementary, Mr. Delorey.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I heard the Minister say on a number of occasions, that the process used has a set of criteria, about five different criteria used for each project to prioritize it. Can the Minster tell me if these five criteria are used on a standard basis right across, or are there 32 different ways or however many communities that are getting addressed? Are these criteria applied differently to each community or are they standardized right across the board? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Delorey. The honourable Minister responsible for the FMB, Mr. Handley.

Mr. Speaker, it is intended that all these criteria would be used in a standard way so that we are being fair to all communities, to all regions in the territories and to all departments. That should be done at the department level and it should be also done at the Financial Management Board level. We never arrive at 100 percent consensus on some of the major projects. For that reason, Mr. Speaker, we are now in the process of developing an alternative capital planning process. We are putting that together over the next couple of weeks and I intend to bring an alternative process forward to the Regular Members, to AOC, as soon as I can get the green light from FMB. So hopefully we have an alternative that will work better than it seems the current capital planning process has worked. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Item 6, oral questions. The honourable Member for Great Slave, Mr. Braden.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I was interested in the information from Mr. Handley, the Minister responsible for the Financial Management Board Secretariat, on the new process that we are going to be engaged in. I would like to find out today, if possible, not so much what that plan is going to look like but what will be the outcome. What are the key objectives, Mr. Speaker, that the government has in mind in designing this new process? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Braden. The honourable Minister responsible for the FMB, Mr. Handley.

Mr. Speaker, we have given the deputies who are working on this task three objectives for them to work toward. One is we have asked them to clarify a core capital need and develop an infrastructure policy. What is our policy with regard to, for example, territorial facilities versus community facilities? Should we be ranking a territorial hospital with the same criteria that we are as a community water system? Is there a way of doing this differently? We've asked them to give us some direction and propose some policy framework for us. A second task is we have asked them to look at potential ways of doing our capital projects differently. Are there ways of doing some things by the public partnerships, for example, levering other infrastructure investment. The proposed Deh Cho bridge is a good example of how we can do capital projects differently without just using our money. A third one, Mr. Speaker, that we've asked the committee to look at is strategies for coping with infrastructure impacts as a result of resource development. A lot of our infrastructure is being stretched to its limit because of the resource development going on. Is there a way of dealing with that kind of pressure more cooperatively and jointly with the big resource development companies? Those would be the three main tasks that we are looking forward to. We have also given a fairly tight time frame for this to be completed. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Supplementary, Mr. Braden.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I am in support of those objectives. I think those are good ones in designing this kind of system, though sometimes I think we do not seek input or advice far enough or wide enough in order to build a good process the people will have confidence and acceptance in. So I wanted to ask, Mr. Speaker, in putting these plans together and in seeking answers to these three objectives, will you be going out, not only to mayors potentially and band councils, but to industry leaders, to the federal government and business community to get their input into it as well? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Braden. The honourable Minister responsible for the FMB, Mr. Handley.

Mr. Speaker, the way I am proposing we will do this is first I will take the proposal of what we intend to do to FMB, have their agreement that we should proceed this way. I would like to discuss with AOC what we are doing and then give the team the mandate to get on with it. In doing their job, then, yes, we will have to consult with the MLAs and we will have as much consultation as possible. We are proposing to have a workshop some time in March where we would invite representatives from our government, from DIAND, from the communities, from aboriginal organizations, from private industry to sit down with us and say how do we deal with the challenges around infrastructure? So we plan to do pretty wide consultation in developing a better capital planning process. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Supplementary, Mr. Braden.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. That's great. That's the kind of approach that I can support. In my statement, Mr. Speaker, I suggested that rather than taking a yearly approach, that we could potentially look at it, for instance, in the four-year term that we come into office for. If we look, for instance, at our $75 million capital budget this year, that becomes a $300 million capital budget and something that potentially has more opportunities and flexibility. Is this the kind of criteria that could be incorporated as an option in this new policy? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Braden. The honourable Minister responsible for the FMB, Mr. Handley.

Mr. Speaker, at this point, I would think that we want to stay with a five-year capital planning process and with our 20-year needs assessment process, so we have a bigger picture of what's happening. We may also, in some specific projects, want to work with industry for as long as 30 or 50 years on a particular approach on dealing with some kinds of infrastructure, whether it's transportation infrastructure or whatever it may be. But, yes, we have to look at it in the long term, not year by year. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Item 6, oral questions. The honourable Member for Inuvik Boot Lake, Mr. Roland.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, my concern is, as I stated in my Member's statement, about capital projects and when they find themselves on the capital plan. I will give you a couple of examples before I get to my question, which will be directed to the Minister responsible for the Financial Management Board Secretariat, and it's in the area of the college, Mr. Speaker. The community of Inuvik has worked and has put plans forth and there is a campus going up, but will be less a residence in Inuvik, and that's been in the works since the 13th Assembly. So that has a lot of time to be put in and thrown into a plan. Recently, as highlighted in the Standing Committee on Accountability and Oversight's report, there are some concerns of projects jumping the queue, so to speak, and showing up in the capital plan. I would like to know from the Minister if they do intend to develop these policies, which are agreed for the next government but they might be broke anyway and not have to worry about this, but right now for the existing dollars, do your Ministers follow the policies you have in place for the projects highlighted? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Roland. The honourable Minister responsible for the FMB, Mr. Handley.

Mr. Speaker, yes, the Ministers, the departments follow the policies that are set for all of our planning and our activities that we develop. There are some projects that may change. When we put together a five-year capital plan or a 20-year needs assessment, it doesn't mean that something that's booked for five years from now is necessarily still going to be the same priority in five years time. Things may change. For example, as Mr. Roland mentioned, we are building a campus in Inuvik. It only makes sense that we need to have student housing. Do we have to build a residence for students at the same time? I don't know. I am told there is currently enough space. There may be other priorities that will supersede those, and that happens all the time any time we make projections and we have to bring it down to what we can afford to do in a particular year. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Supplementary, Mr. Roland.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Minister just added to my concern. For example, in Inuvik, they say that project probably can't house enough people in the community. While right now, scheduled in this fiscal budget that we are going to be working through, is replacement or repair of housing in another community, and they have vacancies. So how did that manage to jump in ahead? That's why I ask the question, are the policies used and followed by this government? It is great to talk about them, but if they are not followed, then it is not worth the paper they are written on. So, can the Minister inform us as to the criteria that are involved when a Minister comes forward with a capital plan that changes the existing five-year plan? What are the criteria that are involved? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Roland. The honourable Minister responsible for the FMB, Mr. Handley.