Thank you, Mr. Villeneuve. Item 3, Members' statements. The honourable Member for Kam Lake, Mr. Ramsay.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It has been a few days since I have last brought up the word diamonds in this House, and I would like to begin...

The Member is seeking unanimous consent to conclude his statement. Are there any nays? There are no nays. You may conclude your statement, Mr. Ramsay.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. What the Government of the Northwest Territories needs to do -- and I would like to demand of it -- is that it get a handle on a true cost-benefit analysis of this industry. I believe that we need to know the true costs and we should have some options that are presented to us and the sooner the better. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

---Applause

Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Item 3, Members' statements. The honourable Member for the Inuvik Twin Lakes, Mr. McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to congratulate the new daduk, Calvin.

---Applause

Mr. Speaker, this weekend in Inuvik, the 14th Annual IRC Cup Native Hockey Tournament was held. The tournament brings together teams from the Beaufort-Delta and Deline who have always tried to make the trip. This is a good opportunity for people in the region to get together and see old friends and classmates and compare weight gain and grey hair. I lost on both counts.

I was told, Mr. Speaker, that at least 600 people took in the final game on Sunday. On the "A" side, Northwind Industries of Inuvik defeated Tuktoyaktuk. On the "B" side, Paulatuk defeated Fort McPherson, which goes to show the improvement of some of the smaller communities, and that bodes well for the future of the tournament.

---Laughter

---Applause

Special thanks, Mr. Speaker, has to go to the Inuvialuit Regional Corporation for their financial sponsorship of the tournament and Donny and Wilma Hendricks for their efforts in organizing the tournament. Mr. Speaker, that concludes today's sports report. Thank you.

---Applause

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Item 3, Members' statements. The honourable Member for Great Slave, Mr. Braden.

Mr. Speaker, from the sports desk we will go over to the business desk and...

---Laughter

...take a look at the status of our secondary diamond industry in the Northwest Territories.

Mr. Speaker, this government has made some very sound and very good investments and great policy moves in the secondary diamond industry. We have established internationally recognized standards in our training programs for diamonds. We have boldly, and I think correctly, gone into some areas regarding the branding and the certification of diamonds, something again that was new to the world and seems to be well received. We have used the diamond industry to our advantage in cultivating the image of the Northwest Territories in our tourism product and we certainly set a strong line, when we sought a 10 percent allocation from diamond miners of their product to stay behind here in the NWT.

Mr. Speaker, these areas, while they have been a sound and very intelligent support of the industry, we have made some real blunders in the risk side, in the actual frontline involvement in the diamond cutting industry itself. We initially had to come back in and back up a loan guarantee for the Deton'Cho Diamond Corporation in the $1 million neighbourhood. We got involved in a very protracted and expensive Polar Bear trademark issue with the Sirius diamond company and now we face a $3 million and growing tab with the coverage of our loan guarantee at Sirius.

It is folly, Mr. Speaker, for our government to continue to paper over our mistakes with taxpayers' money. We need to realize that things are not going well for us as investors, as frontline players, in the secondary diamond industry. It is indeed important for us to continue to support the secondary diamond industry with initiatives like training and the business environment, but we cannot afford any longer to risk taxpayers' money on high-risk ventures that we do not understand. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

---Applause

Thank you, Mr. Braden. Item 3, Members' statements. The honourable Member for Yellowknife Centre, Mr. Hawkins.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, something that came as a real surprise while reviewing the budget this year was the number of budgeted positions, salaries and benefits that don't consistently account for how many positions are both vacant and filled. Mr. Speaker, in some cases we are being asked to approve money for ghost positions that have been vacant for many years and months. Mr. Speaker, two weeks ago I tabled some comments with regard to how long the Audit Bureau has had missing positions. Mr. Speaker, this budget year, 2005-06, we have $186 million in salaries and benefits. That doesn't include the money that's going directly to the health and education authorities to pay their staff. It's just a simple snapshot. On September 30, 2004, we had 406 vacant positions in the government and Aurora College out of our 2,534 positions. Mr. Speaker, that makes about a 16 percent vacancy rate. If we applied 16 percent across the board against our $186 million budget for salaries, we roughly come up with $30 million. That's $30 million and I wonder where it's going.

Mr. Speaker, some people call this unused salary money as their unofficial slush fund. It's not the real money accounted for positions, it's money that could be going to who knows where. I could give you a few good examples of where that money could be used, but it was meant to be used on salaries. It could either go to employ the public service as promised, or it could go to projects like for my good colleague here has suggested, on the Nahendeh gym.

---Applause

Mr. Speaker, we have kids out there that this money could be better used for. We could make them active and we could keep them out of trouble and, as mentioned earlier, we could also help to keep them healthy.

I know in some cases these vacancies are short term and I'll be honest by recognizing that some only last a few weeks, but I'm concerned with the potential abuse by some departments that recognize this loophole and keep these positions vacant to provide them with a source of funding at their discretion that gets passed in this Assembly. I find this very troubling, Mr. Speaker, because later on this month we will be voting on our budget with the impression that that money is going to staff our hard-working public service. Mr. Speaker, it bothers me seriously and I have to admit, are we truly being accountable? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

---Applause

Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. Item 3, Members' statements. Item 4, returns to oral questions. The honourable Minister of Finance, Mr. Roland.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have a return to oral question asked by Mr. Hawkins on February 16, 2005, regarding GNWT Audit Bureau reporting model.

The Audit Bureau is administratively located in the Financial Management Board Secretariat. The director of the Audit Bureau reports to the comptroller general/secretary to the Financial Management Board on administrative matters.

Operationally the Audit Bureau receives direction from the Audit Committee composed of deputy ministers of Education, Culture and Employment, Health and Social Services, Public Works and Services, the secretary to Cabinet and the secretary to the Financial Management Board. The Audit Committee, chaired by the secretary to the Financial Management Board, reports to the chairman

of the Financial Management Board through Financial Administration Manual directive number 603 providing further detail on the internal Audit Bureau. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Roland. Item 4, returns to oral questions. The honourable Minister of Education, Culture and Employment, Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have a return to oral question asked by Mrs. Groenewegen on February 9, 2004, regarding the Aurora College palmistry course.

Mr. Speaker, Aurora College does not have a specific policy on the use of campus facilities by religious organizations. It is the policy of Aurora College to provide space for continuing education courses to be run in college facilities as a public service, provided that this activity does not interfere with either private enterprise or with college activities. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Item 4, returns to oral questions. Item 5, recognition of visitors in the gallery. The honourable Member for Hay River South, Mrs. Groenewegen.

Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. Item 5, recognition of visitors in the gallery. The honourable Member for Kam Lake, Mr. Ramsay.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to recognize Ms. Julie McNeice who is with us today, a constituent of mine. Thank you.

---Applause

Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Item 5, recognition of visitors in the gallery. It's with great pleasure today that I would like to recognize some very special guests in the gallery, again, I'd like to recognize our very good friends from Scotland who are over here visiting with us and have spent the weekend with us, Gordon Walker and Lynda Brise, and it gives me great pleasure to introduce to you today my wife who is in here with us today. Welcome to the Legislative Assembly, Davida.

---Applause

Also with them is my assistant from Hay River, Deb Mageean.

---Applause

Welcome to the House. It was indeed a pleasure to have you over here, Lynda and Gordon, for the weekend. We took them out on Great Slave Lake and gave them some experiences in our northern playtime that I think they really appreciated. Item 5, recognition of visitors in the gallery. Item 6, oral questions. The honourable Member for Range Lake, Ms. Lee.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, as I stated earlier in my statement, the insurance industry made a profit in one year -- just in one year -- in the amount of $4.2 billion and in case I didn't repeat that enough, that is four times more than the money we need to run our government annually. That is a lot of money, especially in light of the fact that we all had to pay into that. We have been seeing rising costs of insurance on everything and, Mr. Speaker, this is an issue that I've raised many times in various forums and I've been told that the regulation of the insurance industry is not within our jurisdiction, but that is not, I don't believe, Mr. Speaker, to say that there is nothing we can do. One of the things that is being done by a group called CFIB, which is the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, are asking the federal government to hold hearings to get to the bottom of the rising costs of the insurance industry and I would like our government to get involved with that as well. So could I ask the Minister responsible for insurance, the Honourable Floyd Roland, to see if the government could intervene? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

---Applause

Thank you, Ms. Lee. The honourable Minister of Finance, Mr. Roland.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, we could I guess with interest, see what the federal government would do and see how we could plug into anything that they've adopted and move forward in the area of insurance regulations. Thank you.