Yes, I will, Mr. Chairman.

Does the committee agree the Minister brings in witnesses?

Sergeant-at-Arms, would you escort the witnesses in please.

For the record, Mr. Handley, could you introduce your witness.

Mr. Chairman, with me is Lew Voytilla, secretary to the Financial Management Board. Thank you.

Welcome, witness. Before I allow for general comments, I just want to remind the Members that under section 79, the rules of the House in regard to Committee of the Whole:

1. No Member shall speak for more than 10 minutes at any one time in Committee of the Whole.
2. Subject to the discretion of the chair, a Member may speak more than once on a matter under discussion, but not until every Member wishing to speak has spoken.

I just want to assure that we allow for other Members, and to allow fairness in the House. So I will be reminding you if this rule does apply. I will be enforcing it if I have to. General comments, Bill 18, Supplementary Appropriation Act. General comments. Ms. Lee.

General Comments

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I'd like to offer a few general comments. I understand that a supplementary appropriation is sort of a mini budget, where after a main budget is passed in the spring session, the government comes back with additional items that the legislature is supposed to approve. I understand that the Minister is requesting upwards of $10 million of cuts. I think it is really important, and, Mr. Chairman, you made a statement earlier today about the fact that we have a population of 40,000 people but a budget of about $900 million or more. With that amount of money for this relatively small figure in comparison to other jurisdictions in Canada, we should be doing much better with the money we have. Mr. Chairman, you gave an example of various studies that the government has engaged in, some of them with better results than others. We have spent millions and millions of dollars either reviewing a policy or in some other ways. I think this should be a concern for everyone, that we will be engaged in major cuts here because we're going to be cutting $10 million from what was already approved.

Another thing I noticed in our review of the supplementary budget in our committee, was the lack of information that we had on each item. I believe almost all of the line items had a very brief explanation as to what the expenditure request or reduction requests constituted, and many of them were economizing measures, without giving us any idea what sort of exercise was followed in determining those reductions and what sort of criteria was followed, and was it a case of the government is short of money so the government sends out a message to all the departments and issues an order that every department should come up with that money.

Mr. Chairman, while I understand that government is in a difficult situation and that it needs to look at spending cuts, a problem with that sort of direction is that we may be cutting things where things are working, but not cutting enough where things should be cut.

Another thing I think a lot of Members expressed in our review, was that in many of the cutting items, there would be a budget of $900,000 cut here or $100,000 cut there or $200,000 cut there, and the indication from the Minister is that the impact of those kinds of cuts will be low or medium. The questions that come to mind when you're looking at things like that is that we spend hours and hours arguing for $50,000 there or a $100,000 project in my community, or whatever. It's just such an uphill battle to get any kind of budget item in the budget. For Mildred Hall School, for example, they're having to do a real patching job in their renovation of a school building that is as old as the city -- well, not quite, about half as old as the city -- and we're not able to do anything more to that building other than basic renovations to meet safety and fire regulations.

Yet when you are faced with a budget proposal in a supplementary appropriation like this one that says $200,000 or $300,000 could be cut with low or medium impact, then one has to ask why it was in there in the first place. So I do believe it was the frustration on the part of lots of Members that we do not have as much say and control over how the government spends its $900 million budget, and the fact that we see three months later we're faced with having to cut $10 million and to be given very minimal information as to how that came about, how it was determined who was going to get cut by how much, and a lack of detailed analysis as to what the real impact of that might be. So I think that is something that lots of Members addressed.

Mr. Chairman, I know that one of the things that the Minister is asking for here is $1.9 million in additional expenses for the contracts for general practitioners. As we are aware, there has been lots of discussion about the negotiations going on for other medical practitioners. So as we move along I am going to be asking more detailed questions about that.

Another thing that I remember from our discussions was I think there's upwards of about $900,000 being cut in one section of Education, Culture and Employment. I realize and I appreciate that the Department of Education, Culture and Employment is one of the biggest spending departments we have, probably right up there with the Department of Health and Social Services. But that is one area, for example, where it's not the whole department, but just one section. I think it's the continuing education and adult education where we've been asked to cut a lot of money.

Mr. Chairman, I guess the Minister will say -- and I'm not going to put words in his mouth, but it's something that I've heard lots of time -- we have different spending pressures and the major grievances that we have, is the fact that we don't have a very good financial arrangement with the federal government and we're not getting our fair share, not only in our arguments about the number of people who actually live here as a result of the census -- and everybody who lives here brings us a transfer payment in the amount of somewhere between $16,000 to $18,000, the numbers change all the time -- but also the fact that we are not getting enough of a share of our resources from economic and industrial development. I believe that is one area of pursuit that government has to be engaged in, and every successive government has gone to Ottawa and said all of our grievances and claims about what we are entitled to.

But as you stated earlier, Mr. Chairman, I do believe that we have a responsibility to do our spending wisely. I must tell you, I'm in a committee that reviews finance budgets, and to understand the financial forecast of departments is almost impossible. It is so difficult to understand on what assumptions we come up with in our budget, because so much of our state of deficit or debt depends on what our projection of revenue was and what our projection of the total budget was, and how we spend on that basis. It seems that for the first three years we were doing really well, we had lots of money for everything. Every time a Minister came and talked to us, we found extra money here and extra money there and we're getting some money from the federal government and so on. Then all of a sudden we're in complete dire straits and we may be hitting the debt wall of $300 million a lot faster than we could. So that's another area of frustration that I have experienced as a Member in examining the budget that is forwarded by the government and the Minister. Now we're talking about a supplementary budget, and we're also having to enquire and get information about how government justifies its spending and so on.

I have a question that I asked the Minister in my line of questions about the specialists' negotiation. One of the things I said was that if the worst possible scenario happens...

Ms. Lee, your 10 minutes is up. General comments.

---Applause

Excuse me, could we have some order in the House. We're dealing with Bill 18, Supplementary Appropriation Act. General comments.

Detail. Could we go to page 5. Legislative Assembly operations expense, office of the Clerk, negative $139,000. Ms. Lee.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. May I have the government give a breakdown of the operational expense? Thank you.

Ms. Lee, your question wasn't clear. Could you elaborate a little more on exactly what type of detail you're looking for?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I believe we're on page 5, and we're on operations budget. I would like to know the breakdown of the $139,000 not previously authorized. Is that the item we're on? May I just get clarification as to exactly what item we're on?

We are on page 5, Legislative Assembly, operations expense, office of the Clerk, negative $139,000. Mr. Handley, could we get clarification on the negative $139,000?

Mr. Chairman, this is a reduction. It's made up of three items: the Clerk's office, a reduction in travel of $8000; a deputy clerk's office, a reduction in language services, $67,000; and a reduction in committees' activities resulting in prioritization of the Assembly essential business, $64,000. Thank you.

Office of the Clerk, negative $139,000. Ms. Lee.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We're talking about a reduction in travel of $8,000 and $67,000 in languages, which I assume is the money required to provide interpreter services or provide publications that arise out of the Legislative Assembly in different official languages. So I would like to know, first of all, what sort of criteria and standard was applied in coming up with this reduction. As we are aware, as we spend lots of time in this building here, there are lots of things going on in this building. So I'd like to know from the Minister what sort of exercise was engaged in coming up with this reduction of $139,000.

Mr. Handley, could we get a breakdown of the $139,000?

Mr. Chairman, each department in government was given a target of 10 percent of their discretional money to achieve as part of the reduction measure. The reduction measure, of course, is to keep our costs in line. With the particular item that I talked about and reducing travel of $8,000, that's simply doing a little less travelling over the current fiscal year.

A reduction in language services; that is money that I understand is surplus to our needs. We don't need to do as much translation as anticipated, and it's largely surplus money.

On the other reduction in committee activities, that is money that the Speaker's office felt could be reduced, given the anticipated workload. Thank you.

Office of the Clerk, negative $139,000. Ms. Lee.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I've heard a number of times in this Assembly from many Members that there's not enough translation work being done to translate not only what is spoken here into official languages, but the documents that arise out of this committee. So I'm finding it hard to believe that a cut of $67,000 in the language budget is not really a big deal. Apparently it's not usually spent to the limit. So I'd like to know what is the total budget to start with for the languages program. Thank you.

Mr. Handley.

Mr. Chairman, I understand that the language services budget is $167,000. Thank you.

Office of the Clerk, not previously authorized, negative $139,000. Ms. Lee.