Mr. Speaker, in the Budget Address there was no shortage of small announcements — $100,000 here, $200,000 there. So you would think on a project the size of the Deh Cho Bridge project that $165 million, committing the government for the next 35 years to expenses, and a bridge that supposedly — and I have yet to be proven wrong — is going to increase the cost of living.... The government says it's going to decrease the cost of living here in the North Slave region, but I beg to

differ. I find it very strange that the government would leave a project the size of the Deh Cho Bridge out of this year's Budget Address. There's no question there, Mr. Speaker, but perhaps the Premier would like to comment on that.

Mr. Speaker, I'll work with the Member on the next Budget Address. Oh, wait. I won't be doing another. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Roland. Oral questions. The honourable Member for Weledeh, Mr. Bromley.

Just briefly on the clarity and so on of the budget, I'd like to just get some clarity. The Minister says that the GNWT intends to realign $135 million in expenditures. For clarification, does that mean cut, or is he realigning it some other way? Maybe disappearing it or something.

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. The honourable Minister of Finance, Mr. Roland.

Mr. Speaker, I think if we just did an example from Mains to Mains, or even Revised Mains to Mains, we'd see that from Mains to Mains of ’07-08, as a practice of budgetary process, we're growing by 5.5 per cent, if you take out the one-time bump-ups for trucks that have been put in place and so on. So when we're talking about realignment, there's going to be a portion that we need to cap, or manage our growth of government. So there will be some reduction — Members are talking about reductions in different levels of programs — and an impact on some of our employees. But we want to reinvest money in the Northwest Territories, as well, and that's where we've come up with the $75 million figure of reinvesting that in the Northwest Territories in key priority areas that departments will have to be accountable for and show that they've made an investment, not just throwing more dollars into existing programs that are sometimes questionable.

I acknowledge that I'm really dense on this stuff, but let me just read the sentence again: The GNWT intends to realign $135 million in expenditures with $75 million to be reallocated to those spending priorities. What is the difference between “realign” and “reallocate?”

Mr. Speaker, as we put this plan in place, we looked at a $135 million overall reduction. Seventy-five million dollars of that would need to be reinvested in our priorities. As we put this plan together, it clearly shows we've not met our targets, and in the fact the budget still grows. So it's pretty hard to put it into the reduction scenarios that the unions have been talking about, and that's our initial language as well. We're having to manage our growth and find some dollars from in

the system to reinvest. Of course, those who are affected in the delivery of those programs, as well as receiving those programs, see that as a direct reduction. It’s a matter of our language, I guess. We could have talked about the target of a $135 million reduction and out of that, $75 million looking for reinvestment.

That would certainly be clear language and understandable, which would be a refreshing change here. Just one more clarification. On B-5 there's a graph in the Budget Address, and it lists components of change, strategic initiatives and other initiatives that I think total $72 million according to the paragraph under “Expenditures” on the same page. What's the difference here between strategic initiatives and other initiatives, and are those outlined somewhere that's accessible?

Mr. Speaker, I know the Ministers will be available for all the detailed questions Members may have in each department of those initiatives that are affected. In this part, as the government has prepared the budget — as I stated earlier, I believe it was yesterday — in the budget process when we talked about the normal business planning cycle, letters go out to departments in June and August and capital gets added. That is all put together and presented to Members in September for review and reporting back, and then Cabinet takes that back and makes some changes. We present a budget in February or March. That's a typical year process. So some of this work — the other initiatives — was in fact beginning to be looked at and talked about by previous Assemblies, and we’ve looked at that work and they aligned with our priorities. But the strategic initiatives are the ones that flow out of the work that we did starting this government.

Thank you, Mr. Roland. Oral questions. The honourable Member for Hay River South, Mrs. Groenewegen.

I wasn’t planning to ask any more questions, but after the Finance Minister offered to let Mr. Ramsay help him write his next Budget Address, for one minute I thought he was serious. I thought I had seen a little evidence of something called working together. I believed him, and then he said, of course, “Oh yeah, I won’t be the Finance Minister next time.”

I don’t know who the Premier and Finance Minister hired to write his speech this year, but we seem to be having some trouble with the language in it. We’re having a little difficulty understanding it. As Mr. Bromley said, maybe we’re just dense on this side of the House. But in the interest of clarity, we have the budget paper, economic review, fiscal review. Would it be possible to add to that? In the interests of people understanding why we are

making these reductions, if we could include a fiscal forecast in this, that would lay that out for the next several years.

Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. The honourable Minister of Finance, Mr. Roland.

Mr. Speaker, I believe that would be good advice. We talk about it as Members. We shared that, our fiscal strategy, the years of projections, what goes into our projections and using our relationships. For example, our first year of budgeting comes from numbers we know we had from the federal government. We build on that with estimates. So yes, I can't see why we can’t put that in place.

Thank you, Mr.

Roland. Oral

questions. The honourable Member for Mackenzie Delta, Mr. Krutko.

Thank you, Mr.

Krutko. The

honourable Minister of Human Resources, Mr. McLeod.

I know that seasonal workers are very important to the communities. Just to be very clear, maybe the Member could clarify what types of positions he is talking about. Is he talking about firefighters? Is he talking about highway workers?

Mr. Speaker, I’m talking about the marine equipment maintainer assistant’s position in Fort McPherson for the Abraham Francis Ferry on the Peel River. This individual has been with the organization almost 30 years. He's making $30,000 a year as his main source of income. He has a large family. Yet as a government, we're trying to

say we don't need you anymore; you've been with us for 30 years, but maybe it’s time to go. Yet we think we're going to save $30,000. I think if anything we should be giving this individual a medal for hanging in there as long as he has and maybe trying to let him know we’re going to give him a pension or something before we kick him out the door. So I’d like to ask the Minister — that’s the position I'm talking about — is there any way that position can be reinstated?

As I talked about earlier, we do have the Staff Retention Program. The Department of Human Resources will work very closely with the department responsible for marine operations to work with the affected employee with the objective of retaining him and finding him a similar position somewhere in the Northwest Territories.

Mr. Speaker, I'd like to know: as the so-called seasonal positions are being cut, are those individuals eligible for a pension from this government for services which are seasonal?

Employees that are seasonal-indeterminate obtain benefits on the same basis as any other indeterminate employee.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Final supplementary, Mr. Krutko.

Mr. Speaker, the importance of marine operations, especially in my riding where we depend on two ferry services, and also the number of individuals we see having to be hired from southern Canada because we cannot find those individuals…. Has the Minister looked at the possibility of training and whatnot for these individuals? We're short of engineers; we're short of captains; we're short of people. Yet in order to fill those positions, we have to hire in some cases from overseas.

I'd like to ask the Minister: have you looked at the possibility — I know there's money in the budget for training for those particular positions — of whether that individual could be offered an opportunity to train for one of those positions?