Thank you, Mr. Chairman. A number of areas that the Member touched on, I first want to thank the Member and committee for their continued support and advocacy for tourism. I think that's something that I have especially noted, was the committee's focus and belief that tourism can really play an integral role in diversifying our economy. I want Members to know that despite the reduction exercise that we engaged in here, their support and advocacy was noted and we were able to ensure that there were no reductions to the tourism budget and NWTT's budget this year. We have and are proposing to create a new tourism position through the reorganization exercise. We do recognize that this is a priority and it is something that committee has pointed to as a priority and I'm looking forward to trying to support and work together with committee to further support and enhance tourism in the Northwest Territories. I think this review underway should point us in the right direction, which I am very optimistic about. But I look forward to sitting down with committee to go through that as we talk about moving the tourism agenda forward.
The Member also pointed to the reorganization expense and I know that we had a lot of discussion as a department and we came back and forth with committee a number of times and did settle on the least cost option that would allow us to still roll out an effective program and service delivery. I think Members would realize and understand that there were going to be some costs. In order to create the two departments out of one, there was an additional expense. We tried to keep that expense to the bare minimum by setting up things like the shared services structure so that much of the administrative work can be shared between the two departments and not, in fact, duplicated. But in some areas where we had thought that there might be more savings, we ended up realizing that in order to really deal with the issues that were driving us, we weren't able to do so. For instance, policy departments. You can imagine if you're trying to deal with a perceived conflict between the existing department, you really need the heart of the matter; the heart of the issue is the need for two separate policy shops. So we've done that. Superintendents have to be separated, we believe. There have to be two different superintendents in the regions. So it's an additional superintendent position in each region, but we think it's absolutely necessary. It did drive some additional office requirements in certain locations, but we felt that it was important. So when we looked at the options in terms of one-time costs and ongoing, we looked at a few and really came down to the option that we thought was going to be effective while still being the cheapest. Given our fiscal reality, that did drive some of our decision-making. So we tried to keep the cost to a minimum wherever possible.
The Member pointed out, and the committee makes note of it as well, and we had a number of discussions around this issue in committee, but the new BDIC and his suggestion that there were in fact still some duplication between our investment and economic analysis division in RWED and the new BDIC and talked about where these positions might best be located.
I do like the recommendation about the NWT service centre and that is certainly something that we want to look at. I appreciate the recommendation from committee. I think that's a very good one. But I would say to Members that we are dealing with these issues and, as I mentioned and committed to before, once the board is up and running, I will direct a program and service review for our business programming and we can have some discussion around these issues and where these positions would best be housed.
Pipeline employees; I will acknowledge that I fell down here in terms of responding to committee. I initially did not grasp that you were not only looking for RWED positions but government-wide positions. We've now moved on that and we're going to the various different departments and collecting and tabulating that information. We'll come back to committee with a discussion around those issues. It is a more extensive exercise, so it's going to take us some time, but I will commit to coming back with that information to committee and we can sit down and talk about it. You're right; it is important that we have this overall government coordination and it is important that we adequately understand what each and every department is doing in this regard to make sure that there is the best use of resources possible and that we're not duplicating efforts.
MVPO money, regarding the Member's disappointment that we haven't been able to move more quickly, in the June session we did get the supplementary approved and we have moved forward to an RFP process for office space. The office is currently being constructed and we think it will be ready by the end of March. We haven't waited for that. We do have one employee who's moving down, I believe, maybe at the end of this month. The communications person for the MVPO, one of their tasks will be exactly the recommendation committee makes, if I can go to Committee Report 10-15(3), and that was a recommendation that ITI develop a communication strategy to advise the public how the public is organized around this project. That will be one of the first tasks for the communications person at the MVPO and as further employees come on stream, they will move to Hay River and take those jobs. But we don't expect that is likely to happen until the end of March. April 1st was our time commitment; we think we're going to be ready to have people moving into that office as of April 1st.
I think that was the number of issues that Mr. Ramsay had asked me for some information on. He also mentioned indeterminate hiring around some of the positions. We would acknowledge that we are looking to GNWT employees first. We think this is a great opportunity and wanted to offer, specifically in regions, the opportunity for superintendents to come from the existing public service. Where we aren't able to staff those positions then we will go and have a broader look, but we were trying to move quickly and thought this was certainly a good opportunity
to grow and develop our public service. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.