Thank you, Mr. Minister. General comments. The time's up for you, Mr. Villeneuve. Mr. Menicoche.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just with respect to some of the noted deficiencies, as we're reviewing Bill 9, with regard to providing grants to organizations that have not received a proper accounting from the year before, I'm just wondering, Mr. Chairman, if the Minister can comment on the existing guidelines to providing funds to organizations when they haven't really been accounting for previous usage. What are the guidelines in use today? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. Mr. Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, the guidelines are clear that there should be a proper accounting for the funds that are distributed, and there should be a reporting back of those. As the departments go forward in looking at how those expenditures are made, and if they were in accordance with the proposals put forward, they would be dealt with in that appropriate manner. I know the issue of concern was raised with committee, and we've notified the appropriate department. I believe, in this particular case, Mr. Dent may have information to respond to that particular issue that the Member is raising.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Mr. Dent, would you like to...

---Laughter

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Could I have the question restated, please?

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Mr. Menicoche.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I was just looking for some assurance of what systems are in place so the public will have confidence in our system that we are not providing grants and contributions to organizations that haven't had proper accounting for prior years' contributions. It happened, of course, in this case. I'm just wondering what mechanisms are in place and, indeed, if there was a deficiency, will they be addressing it with some new type of guidelines? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Yes, there's always a concern when there's criticism when we lose money. There's a criticism when we don't have enough accounting so money isn't recovered. The issue of accountable advances, though, is hard to get past. It would be difficult for us to offer up much of our programming dollars if we didn't allow the money to go out in advance of the program being undertaken. So we have to continue, I think, with the process of allowing for accountable advances. The goal is, of course, to make sure that we are watching for instances where the organization may be getting in trouble, and making sure that we aren't continuing to advance good money after bad, if you will. That's certainly something that we will be doing. In this instance, the department has followed up on the issue. There were obviously extensive efforts made to recover the funding and to pursue invoices to recover the monies, but we didn't get the money and the accounting was never actually provided either. The department is being more and more vigilant, but we are going to have to continue to use this kind of advancing of monies in order to make sure the non-profit organizations can get their operations underway. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Mr. Menicoche.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The committee, of course, is concerned and I was just wondering what has actually been done. Is there any evidence that the government is acting so that this situation will not happen again? Could the Minister of FMBS answer that for me, Mr. Chairman?

Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. Mr. Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. When it comes to the role of FMBS here, we end up dealing with these as we are now, in the form of reporting it to the Legislative Assembly. The other role we would play is ensuring the departments follow the guidelines that are in place, and that's something we'll be more vigilant in is ensuring that the guidelines and policies are being followed. If we see there are specific deficiencies in what we're doing now, we'd work to address those. As Mr. Dent stated, the way the money would flow in your first year of operations and looking for an accounting, they can give quarterly advances in dealing with those and trying to get the information flow. As we know, in a lot of these societies or non-profit organizations are small groups and they might not all have the expertise as board members change. That still doesn't allow for not following the processes and policies established. I believe Mr. Dent has further detail to this as well, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Roland. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The Member had asked for specific examples. What the Department of Education, Culture and Employment is endeavouring to do is reduce the numbers of advances that are given out and the amounts. While recognizing that they're still necessary, there's an attempt to limit the amount that is outstanding at any one time, and to that way improve on the requirement for accounting to be delivered before we advance further funds.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Mr. Menicoche. Thank you. Mr. Zoe.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I realize that these are debts being written off from previous years. Nevertheless, just to follow up on my colleague from Nahendeh, when the department knows that the cultural organization hasn't accounted for the previous year, I understand that in the new fiscal year they can ask for another grant and it could be done in a certain manner. If they could get some sort of funding in advance for the first quarter, to get their second quarter they should be able to provide accounting for the previous year so that it's not a backlog. They should be reporting on a quarterly basis so they can account for it. So at the end of the day, you won't have that much accounting to do. Is that the type of mechanism that we have in place now, so that this type of thing doesn't occur in the future?

Thank you, Mr. Zoe. Mr. Roland.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, the member is accurate in his assumption of the policies as they work now. We do make an accounting of advances on a quarterly basis and encourage that information would get back to the departments before they proceed. In a number of these cases, for some reason, that wasn't done in the past. As stated by the Minister, there have been a number of changes in the way that we deal with these. That policy is in place about proceeding on to the next year and doing it on a quarterly basis. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Roland. Mr. Zoe. Thank you. General comments on Bill 9 by members. Does the committee agree to go clause by clause?

Thank you. I'm just getting help here. Thanks a lot for your patience. Stand down the clauses and go down to schedule 1, page 3. Mr. Braden.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The discussion that my colleagues and the Ministers have had has helped to illustrate some of the general aspects of how we monitor and manage the flow of contributions and loans to all sorts of different organizations in the NWT. It's helpful, of course, and positive to see that we've taken steps to tighten up the way we manage these things and that hopefully there will be less and less of this kind of thing happening. I think it's useful, for the record, to put some detail around a couple of these cases just to illustrate and to probe what went wrong in some cases, and why we have had to make these changes.

On schedule 1, Mr. Chairman, item 2, regarding the NWT Development Corporation, they are applying for a write-off of $150,000 in unrealizable preferred shares in Nats'enelu Limited. Mr. Chairman, I would like to ask the Minister a few questions about this amount of money to this corporation. Over what period of time was the NWT Development Corporation involved in supporting Nats'enelu Limited? Thank you.