Yes, Mr. Chairman.

Does committee agree? Sergeant-at-Arms, please escort the witnesses in. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Can you introduce your witnesses, please?

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

Thank you. We are dealing with Bill 19 at the present time. We will stand down consideration of the preamble, clauses and schedule, and deal with the detail on a page-by-page basis. Can we turn to page 5? Page 5, Legislative Assembly, operations expenditures, office of the Clerk, not previously authorized, $95,000.

Total department, $95,000.

Page 6, Executive, operations expenditures, Executive offices, not previously authorized, $1.210 million.

Total Executive offices, $1.210 million. Mr. Braden.

Mr. Chairman, thank you. One of the details on this page is listed as a $14,000 contribution providing increased funding to the Status of Women Council of the Northwest Territories for additional costs associated with the implementation of salary increases.

Mr. Chairman, at various times in this session, we have talked about our government's responsibilities to various boards and agencies and organizations that deliver services to us and this detail very specifically identifies one of these organizations, or, sorry, two of the organizations, the Status of Women Council and the Native Women's Association, as being eligible for increased contributions for salary increases comparable to the GNWT public service.

Mr. Chairman, as these types of organizations, I certainly am in support of this allocation, but what I'm wondering about is how do we differentiate between these two organizations, the Status of Women Council and the Native Women's Association, as opposed to other organizations such as the YWCA, the NWT Literacy Council, the NWT Association of Families? Why are they not included in this supp for similar allocations for salary increases, again pegged to what we have agreed to for our own civil service? So can the Minister give me some explanation as to why these two organizations are identified and not others, Mr. Chairman?

Thank you, Mr. Braden. Mr. Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, the area that was raised earlier about the third-party accountability framework, what we've done in the Financial Management Board, trying to deal with the concerns about forced growth in some of these areas, as we established third-party funding criteria and established the three categories. The first category involves those agencies or boards that are legislatively mandated for the provision of core public programs and services. So that would be the first area that we would look at. As well in that area we look at cost elements that are highly defined and maintain the competitiveness and capacity, and operations are critical to the stability and continuity of programs delivered. So there are a number of areas that we look at and that would be the...Category one is the one where we would look at applying forced growth.

The other two, category two and category three, is something we would look at, and then there's some judgement in what a category two might be versus going into category one level programs. But we established this criteria and looked at the roles that are out there and came up with this level of area where we feel we could support the forced growth portion. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Mr. Braden.

Okay. So what other agencies, Mr. Chairman, would be included in this category one, which I understand these are organizations which would automatically get a comparable increment to our public service. Are there any other agencies or organizations of this nature, Mr. Chairman?

Thank you, Mr. Braden. Mr. Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, as our process works, under forced growth those that do end up into category one would have the

ability through their processes and negotiations and substantiation put in through their appropriate department's requests for forced growth and that would be considered through the normal budgetary process. One of the other organizations, for example, is the housing authorities. Those have been put into the category one area. We do have some information here, and it would take a bit of work to go through it to pull out all the specific ones, but it would be areas like that where they're delivering a direct service in the sense that we would be doing as a government. So housing authority and public housing areas, those are areas delivering on behalf of the Housing Corporation. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Mr. Braden.

Well, okay, this is, I guess we're straying more into an area here of policy, Mr. Chairman, rather than direct consideration of the budget here. I guess, you know, the Minister said there is some discretion connected with what then is a category two or category three organization and where I'd like to see our government being more proactive is to direct each department to really proactively look at all of the boards or agencies or NGOs that we contract with to deliver programs on our behalf and strive to bring forward new allocations or new requests for funding, as the Minister just explained happened with these two organizations, these two women's organizations. Can each department be directed to look at the contracts we have and consider whether or not new funding allocations could be brought forward as soon as possible so that we can try on an urgent basis, I would say, Mr. Chairman, on an urgent basis, to begin bringing those contract organizations up to some kind of parity with our own wage increases? Would the Minister be able to consider that? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Braden. Mr. Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I guess just before I get into it, a word of caution about wage parity with our unions. One of the things we look at with forced growth, wages are a part of it, but there's a whole number of factors that come into this area and as we have setting up this criteria, we've just done this for this 2006 business plan process and we can look at going into the next business plan cycle to look at this criteria and seeing how other organizations may fit into this as well. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Roland. Page 6, Executive, operations expenditures, executive offices, $1. 21 million.

Total executive offices, $1.21 million.