Very good.

Tabling of documents. Pursuant to section 23(2) of the Public Service Act, I wish to table the Annual Report of the Equal Pay Commissioner for the Northwest Territories for the period July 1, 2006 to June 28, 2007.

Pursuant to section 99 of the Legislative Assembly and Executive Council Act, I hereby table the annual report for the calendar year 2006 of the Conflict of Interest Commissioner of the Northwest Territories.

Tabling of documents. Notices of motion. The honourable Member for Kam Lake, Mr. Ramsay.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I give notice that on Wednesday, August 22, 2007, I will move the following motion: Now therefore I move, seconded by the honourable Member for Sahtu, that this Legislative Assembly strongly recommends the GNWT undertake and disclose updated economic modeling showing the Deh Cho Bridge project's anticipated socio-economic impact and benefits, as it did in 2003; and further that this Legislative Assembly strongly recommends the GNWT defer signing any further agreements concerning the Deh Cho Bridge until after the 16^th Assembly is in office. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Notices of motion. The honourable Member for Great Slave, Mr. Braden.

Thank you, Mr. Braden. Notices of motion. Notices of motion for first reading of bills. Motions. First reading of bills. Second reading of bills. Consideration in Committee of the Whole of bills and other matters: Bill 18 and Bill 15. By the authority given to me by Motion 9-15(6), I hereby resolve the House into Committee of the Whole to sit beyond the hour of adjournment until such time as the committee is ready to report progress, with Mrs. Groenewegen in the chair.

Good afternoon, Members. I will call Committee of the Whole to order. We have several matters before us today. What is the wish of the committee? Mr. Lafferty.

Mahsi, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, the committee wishes to consider Bill 18, Supplementary Appropriation Act, No. 2, 2007-2008, and Bill 15, Liquor Act. Mahsi, Madam Chair.

Mahsi, Mr. Lafferty. Is committee agreed?

Agreed. We'll proceed with that after a brief break.

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I will call Committee of the Whole back to order. The first item on our agenda this afternoon is Bill 18, Supplementary Appropriation Act, No. 2, 2007-2008. At this time, I will ask the Minister of Finance if he will please give his opening comments.

Mr. Chairman, Supplementary Appropriation Act, No. 2, 2007-2008 requests authority for additional appropriations of $6.004 million for operations expenditures and $3.615 million for capital investment expenditures in the 2007-2008 fiscal year.

Major items included in this request for operations expenditures include:

• $2.45 million for the creation and implementation of a Tourism Product Diversification and Marketing Program;
• $1.98 million to fund the projected shortfall of the forest fire suppression budget for the 2007 fire season. This amount is net of recoveries through the Mutual Aid Resource Sharing Agreement for fire suppression activities within other jurisdictions;
• $940,000 to provide appropriation authority to draw down funding provided by the federal government through the patient wait times guarantee trust fund;
• $856,000 to fund the cost of immediate repair of a section of the Hay River runway; and
• $533,000 to provide contribution funding to three groups under the Western Harvesters' Assistance Program.

Major items included in the request for capital investment expenditures include:

• $1.6 million to fund the purchase of five modular classrooms for the Ecole St. Joseph School renovation project; and
• $570,000 to cover a funding shortfall in the water and sewer upgrade project for the Ecole Allain St. Cyr and William MacDonald School.

Also included in the request are two reallocations from operations expenditures to capital investment expenditures, as follows:

• $523,000 to fund a shortfall in the costs associated with the upgrade to PeopleSoft 8.9; and
• $417,000 to begin preliminary work in 2007-2008 for a territorial dementia facility to be constructed in Yellowknife.

That concludes my opening remarks. I would be pleased to answer any questions Members may have. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Roland. There is no committee response to this bill. At this time, I would like to ask the Minister if he would like to bring witnesses into the Chamber. Minister Roland.

Yes, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Minister Roland. Does committee agree?

Agreed. At this time, I will ask the Sergeant-at-Arms to escort the witnesses to the table.

Minister Roland, would you please introduce your witnesses for the record?

Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, to my right is secretary to the FMB, Mr. Cleveland; and to my right is Mr. Sandy Kalgutkar, director of budget evaluation of FMBS. Thank you.

Thank you, Minister Roland. General comments. Mr. Ramsay.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Dealing with Supplementary Appropriation Act, No. 2, there are a few things that I wanted to get on record as saying. I guess I'll start with the $523,000 to fund the shortfall and costs associated with the upgrade of PeopleSoft 8.9. As the Minister and other Ministers have heard earlier in this session, in fact if you go back to 1997 when PeopleSoft was first looked at as a product for the Government of the Northwest Territories, the government has spent approximately $8 million on PeopleSoft in total and that's implementation costs and the costs upfront. It's a substantial amount of money, Madam Chair. Given the problems that we've had with PeopleSoft and the implementation in the last little while, I am just wondering what assurances the Minister can have that an additional half a million dollars is going to correct the issues that are at play with PeopleSoft, and when can the employees expect that this system will be up and running without any kinks in it and be able to be fully utilized, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Mr. Roland.

Thank you, Madam Chair. The PeopleSoft program does have a long history with the Government of the Northwest Territories as we had to renew our past system of payroll and dealing with employees. PeopleSoft originally came into the government, as the Member stated, back in '97 or '98 and the government-of-the-day was looking to replace an older system. What we found in the day was the fact that as the program was brought in, the government did not take the program in the form it was delivered. In fact, I guess the proper terminology is it would be customized to fit the existing government processes. At that point, it was felt that was the best way to go. Since then, with every upgrade that's come online we have found it more and more difficult. In fact, trying to save some dollars, we did not do an upgrade every year. We upgraded every couple of years and recently we found the old version was not going to be supported, so 8.9 was the program that we had to upgrade to. By doing that, we found ourselves in a fair bit of difficulty trying to rectify original customizations done to the program to fit the PeopleSoft program as it was designed, hence the problems we have found with it. We hope now that as we are in the process of going through the pure form of PeopleSoft 8.9, we will get away from the problems that occurred.

As for giving an actual time or deadline as to when things will be 100 percent okay, as we all know, to err is human; to really screw up, you need a computer. Thank you.