Thank you, Mr. Roland. Mr. Ramsay.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Have you got any further speakers on your list, Madam Chair?

Mr. Ramsay, no I don't.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Then I would move that $682,000 be deleted from the activity directorate under the Department of Human Resources, operations expenditure, not previously authorized on page 6 for the increased costs associated with the amalgamation of Human Resources. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. The motion is in order. I will wait until the motion has been circulated before we ask for anyone to speak to the motion.

Okay. The motion has been circulated. The motion is in order. To the motion. Mr. Ramsay.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I thank committee for its indulgence on this motion. I want to start off by saying that this to me is a principle and last year the Minister will remember quite clearly, when the issue came up about Human Resources and why there were so many problems there and issues there, and the fact that they had to go out and hire the Hackett Group from the United States to come in and do some business process type of work inside the department. I told them last year and I'll tell them again today, the government knows where those problems came from. If there were problem departments that weren't doing the work previously, the government knows which departments those are. Human Resources knows which departments those are. Why couldn't the government go back to the various departments where these boxes and boxes, as the Minister says, of files that weren't actioned over the years go back and get the money back from the departments? Somebody has to be responsible here. I said this last year and I'll say it again today, somebody has to be responsible. There's a responsibility factor here. I'm not quite sure if I'm getting my point across, but I'm trying the best I can, Madam Chair, to do that today.

Now, in this supp, HR is coming back looking for another $2.1 million. A component of that is $682,000 that's going to salaries and benefits for their employees. It doesn't make much sense to me when the Minister again says it's the problems that we inherited from the departments. So we let the departments get away with not doing their work and now the supp comes forward and we're just supposed to sit here and accept it and rubberstamp it and say, okay, Human Resources, you keep doing the work that you're doing and we'll keep receiving the phone calls from our constituents that things haven't gotten any better there. They haven't. I still get phone calls from people whose pay is messed up, benefits are messed up. We have to do better.

I know it's still in its infancy, I know we're working on the problems, but somebody has to take responsibility. Just coming and trying to get the Legislative Assembly of the Northwest Territories to fork over more money for mistakes without pointing fingers and getting some people to take responsibility...If there are DMs out there, if there are managers of HR, former managers of HR in the departments that never did their job, you know what? I want to know about it. We should concern ourselves with that. Because you know what? They're probably still working for us. That's why we should be responsible. That's why I hope my colleagues would see to it that we delete this money, we send a message to the government, we're not going to accept that. We can't continue to accept that type of activity to take place, Madam Chair. It's that simple. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. To the motion. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I just wanted to outline that it's unfortunate I didn't get questions referred to me during the previous question and answer period because I think I could have answered some of the questions that have been posed by committee members. Of the amount of money that's being requested in the transition costs, a big portion of the money, or some of that money, about $167,000 of the portion that Mr. Ramsay is talking about, or the motion talks about, is a result of the decision to move all impacted human resources staff from departments into the amalgamated structure. That meant that a significant number of staff who were taken on by the department were above the salary level for the positions that we had. So we've been in a situation where nearly 20 percent of our staff are above the salary grid than what we have allowed for those positions in the structures when the department was set up. So because of that, we are in the process of reducing people, have been reducing people through attrition over the course of this year. It is an ongoing problem when you're required to take on staff who are paid at higher levels than what the budget allows you for those positions.

The other and the major portion or the balance of the money in this is for what's called an employee leave and termination balance. This is a line item that every department is required to have; it's an accrual for severance that you need to have in place and for the regular costs associated with increased years of service. This line, or this item, should have been incorporated as part of the department's budget when it was first set up, but the amounts have only now been calculated so it took a while to get this number calculated, so that's why it's being brought in at this point in time. So this isn't extra money; it's something that was going to have to be in there at some point.

Was all the accounting work done before the department was set up? I guess apparently not. I'm not sure if it was possible to get it done beforehand or if they had to wait and see who all was being transferred in from departments in order to figure out these accruals. They do relate to accruals, for instance, for retirement costs and for annual experience costs, or the increments that employees get throughout the course of the year. So it's not something that's unusual, but they are benefits that, at some point, will have to be paid and departments all have to accrue them. This line, unfortunately, wasn't included in the budget when it was passed for the beginning of this fiscal year. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. To the motion. Next I have Mr. Miltenberger.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, this circumstance was about 10 years in the making when they disbanded Personnel and after 10 years decided to put it back together when it was finally recognized the fragmented, uncoordinated, inefficient services that we were trying to maintain as a government across every department. It is a Herculean task that's been required, not to mention the PeopleSoft system which was watered down and fiddled with to the point that it was barely operational. So I'm not going to be supporting this motion.

I know that in my constituency and in the South Slave there's many hundreds of employees, and while I get many concerns as an MLA from my constituency, complaints about this particular service area is not one that consumes a lot of time for myself as an MLA. I know that there's work underway and that this money is helping to improve services in all the regions so I won't be supporting this motion. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. To the motion. Mr. Hawkins.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I thought I, too, would put my course of action on public record; I'll be voting against this motion. I feel that I was part of the group that advocated very strongly for the creation of a new Human Resources department. I personally felt that we should go so far as a public service, take it out of government, but the wisdom of the Assembly felt that it shouldn't and this is the course of action that it chose. I was very grateful that this government, the 15th Assembly, chose a new direction and, as far as I'm concerned, the transition of going from multi-autonomies, in other words, every department and corporation having their own human resource system and function and independently implementing policies as they saw fit, moving to this structure, I think we're putting better value to the system now. I had more concerns, to be quite honest, with human resources when they were in the department and I'm sorry to sort of put it that way but because of the way people implemented the policies on their own and as they interpreted it. The great function of this is we've worked to develop consistent policies and it requires growth in the transition and the fact is it was meant to be created as a seamless growth so we could create some stability -- sorry, a seamless transition, my apologies -- to create stability and I think that it's working in the task that we sought for. In the long run I, too, would like to see some efficiencies fall out of this and I think that it will take a couple more years before that happens.

Now the complaints that other people may have may be very valid and I wouldn't want to say that they aren't, but I underscore, once again, my constituency work has not been tied up with a lot of complaints under the human resource system and most certainly it's received very few calls and complaints since they've amalgamated. I don't say that without saying that there weren't some difficulties with the actual transition phase, but I do say that consistency of processing paper, people getting their records of employment, et cetera, all these processes have improved. So I support the money being left in, in order to, again, maintain stability and so we can move forward. I certainly believe that the streamlining of the system will happen over time and it will happen when it's ready. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. To the motion. Ms. Lee.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I just want to also offer a few comments on this motion. I was here in the 14th Assembly where one of the big issues was the interest of this Legislature to create a public service commission. That was a huge election issue because a lot of people felt that having human resources functions spread out in different departments as a result of dissolution of the Department of Personnel had resulted in situations where there was lack of consistency on how the policies were implemented and applied; a lack of consistency in the timing and delivery of all sorts of, whether it's hiring or disciplining or not disciplining as much, but adjusting pension benefits and records of employment. I mean especially in the area of pensions, that's a highly complicated area and I think the decentralization suffered from the fact that there's not enough people with enough consistent workload that they needed to have to develop that sort of highly technical expertise that would minimize errors and increase the level of consistency. So there was a huge debate about that and a lot of studies, and out of that came not a public service commission but a separate section for human resources. This section started as a smaller unit under FMBS, now it's moving into a bigger section as a department.

Now I do appreciate and I do understand and I do agree that there have been a lot of growing pains. I think Members, as well as the government and the department officials, found all sorts of issues when the files and people moved into one place and were in a position to review lots of problematic files. I've had some of them. I think a lot of them are going through the process and are in the process of being resolved.

I have to say that I've supported this initiative of amalgamating because I'd like to see a time -- and I think we're getting there -- where a human resource section could address the outstanding issues but also move forward to develop a comprehensive and consistent human resource plan for the government, because the government has to take its place back as the number one employer of the North and be able to attract and retain the people that we need to deliver our government programs. I don't think that the department has been able to do that as much because they've had to address and clean up the issues that arose from the time when it was decentralized. I think I could say that I could see that that work is being conducted.

That's my general position on the amalgamation of human resources that I think is relevant to this motion but secondly, more specifically to this motion, based on what the Minister is saying, if this motion was to go through, the cuts will be impacted on the benefits of employees. This is not a situation where the Legislature finds that a section of government is inefficient, ineffective or redundant, so that we lay off the people and move on with that; this is additional money required to pay the people who are entitled to these benefits, because they are at the higher pay scale or extended leave and termination packages, all those. It's something that we cannot do without and if we do this it would really impact the individuals involved. I'm sympathetic to Mr. Ramsay's concerns here about

responsible spending and making sure that all departments, and this department specifically, use their money as efficiently and productively as possible. However, I don't agree that cutting this money will achieve that end. I'm prepared to work with Mr. Ramsay if there are other proposals to improve the situation or come to a solution for problems that we identify, but cutting the benefits and salaries for employees I don't think is going to result in that solution. For those two reasons, general and specific, I will not be supporting this motion.

Thank you, Ms. Lee. To the motion. Mr. Yakeleya.

Thank you, Madam Chair. The motion here, and I want to say to Mr. Ramsay and Members of this House here that, Madam Chair, we have the privilege to bring issues forward even to the point of bringing motions forward, and, as Members, we have the ability to speak on it. So I wanted to thank Mr. Ramsay in terms of giving us this opportunity this afternoon and to bring a motion forward to the House here.

Madam Chair, I agree with Mr. Ramsay on the principle of what he's saying, however, I think there's other means, as Ms. Lee talked about, in terms of achieving those principles by working with the departments and sending a clear message out there. By having this motion come forward, I think that's going to, myself, because I talk about my region, especially about the human resource offices and people I talk to until I'm blue in the face, you know, how our region wants to be on its own and how the region wants to obtain some autonomy in terms of how we work with our own people and the challenge there for us. Madam Chair, I'm afraid that the consequences, more so in terms of it might cost us more in terms of moving this motion forward with our support. I'm a big advocate in terms of our region receiving human resource opportunities and career advancement for our own people in our region and having this come close to our home and having it come close to our people where they have an opportunity. So I'm in the position right now to not support this motion. I'm going to continue working with the department and look at what can be done. I'm hoping that we can work to a place where all regions are treated equally in terms of how the benefits are and the careers, and the departments are working with human resources for their own region and as much as any other region. Certainly the Sahtu would like to see a department that is treating its employees in a respectful manner in terms of the type of work that they're going to do in government. Madam Chair, the human resource office, when I first understood how it's going to be affected in our region, I had a number of inquiries from my region and over the years the inquiries have gotten a lot quieter and the office seems to be doing some things that are improving. So, Madam Chair, I just wanted to thank Mr. Ramsay for bringing this motion forward, but I will not support this motion.

Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. To the motion. Mr. Ramsay.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I thank my colleagues for their comments on this and I do appreciate their concerns. However, getting back to the motion, I think, for me it's a matter of principle and I think some of my colleagues may have been missing the point on that. I think the government is missing the point, as well. What I'm saying, and the reason this motion is in front of us today, is because somebody forgot to be responsible; somebody, and you can look across the room here, there's a number of Cabinet Ministers there with portfolios. When the departments had the HR function, who was responsible for it? The Ministers; the deputy ministers. When we amalgamated it, the first thing that the Minister says when there's problems, well, they came from the departments. Well here we are, we're still bleeding as a result of these problems that were coming from the departments. My concern, Madam Chair, is that we didn't address it at the front end. We didn't go back, identify where the problems came from and rectify that with money from the departments to fix the problems that they created in the first place. That's why this is here. This money is already spent. I mean this is just principle. It's on principle, Madam Chair, that I move this motion.

Again, I respect my colleagues. Madam Chair, I'll go on the record again and say I was fully in support of the amalgamation of human resources. Don't get me wrong; I was. I think it's definitely a step in the right direction. There are some growing pains that are going on there today, but the message should and has to be sent to the government that we are paying attention. That's the bottom line, Madam Chair. Thank you.

Thank you. To the motion.

Question is being called. All those in favour of the motion? All those opposed? The motion is defeated.

---Defeated

Page 6, Human Resources, operations expenditures, human resources, not previously authorized, directorate, $2.118 million, total human resources, $2.118 million.

Agreed. Thank you. Page 7, Financial Management Board Secretariat, operations expenditures, Financial Management Board Secretariat, directorate, not previously authorized, $38.281 million. Mr. Braden.

Thank you, Madam Chair. One of the items under this item for Financial Management Board Secretariat is an increment to the Territorial Power Subsidy Program, Madam Chair, and the amount requested is $487,000. I wanted to see if the Minister could provide us with a running tally. What is the anticipated annual cost of the TPSP this current year, Madam Chair? Also, what kind of an increase is that from the previous year, Madam Chair?