Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Menicoche.

New Proposed Approach — Supplementary Reserve Fund

Members also discussed the government’s proposed new approach to future supplementary appropriations based on the reduction of supplementary reserve funds from $25 million to $10 million. The committee is concerned about the Cabinet’s ability to enforce this approach and to disallow future supplementary appropriations for non-emergency or non-foreseeable funding needs.

Effective and Efficient Government

Ideas and initiatives that would contribute to the goal of the 16th Assembly to create an effective and

efficient government were discussed during a meeting with the Premier. At several points members stressed the importance of keeping the committee informed and engaged when the GNWT plans new initiatives or major changes.

Reductions

Members also suggested that it is important to give any organizations outside the GNWT that are affected by the proposed reductions or cuts early

notice of the anticipated changes. Such an approach should be consistent through GNWT departments and not depend on individual Ministers’ preferences. Members were worried that the proposed cuts would affect a region to a higher degree than the offices at headquarters.

The committee noted that phase 2 of the Family Violence Action Plan is now entering its implementation stage and that the GNWT felt that the family violence coordinator position of the Department of Executive is no longer required.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I’d like to pass the conclusion back to the Chair of the committee, Mr. Kevin Menicoche.

Thank you,

Mr. Abernethy. Mr. Menicoche.

Thank you very much,

Mr. Chairman. I’d just like to thank the Minister and his staff for working with us. I also thank our committee staff: Ms.

Patricia Russell, our

Committee Clerk, and Regina Pfeifer, our committee researcher. We’re prepared to engage with the Department of Executive.

Thank you,

Mr. Menicoche. I will now ask the Minister if he would like to bring witnesses into the Chamber.

Yes, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Minister. Does the committee agree?

Thank you, committee.

Mr. Sergeant-at-Arms, please escort the witnesses into the Chamber.

Will the Minister please introduce his witnesses?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Joining me at the table is the Cabinet Secretary, Mr. David Ramsden, and also the Assistant Deputy Minister of Strategic Planning, Mr. David Stewart.

Thank you, Mr. Roland. I would now like to open it up to general comments.

Hearing no requests for general comments, I’ll ask committee to turn to page 2-11, Operations Expenditure Summary. We will be deferring this until we have considered the rest of the details and will start on page 2-12. Mr. Abernethy.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Nobody’s going to be surprised by my line of questioning. I’m looking at the list of positions. It’s

going from 72 down to 63. I believe in your opening statement you said there were 11 positions affected. This is nine, so there must have been some positions put back, if you can explain that to me?

Also, I’m curious about the process that the Department of Executive used to identify which positions would be eliminated, what criteria were used. You also indicated that…. I can’t remember the exact number you said were vacant in the department of the positions that you eliminated, but can you give me a bit of a sense of the numbers that are vacant and how many staff are actually impacted and whether there’s been any progress made on replacing those staff in other locations.

Thank you,

Mr. Abernethy. Mr. Roland.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I’ll try to respond to all the questions the Member went through. I’ll go through it, but I may miss the last piece.

The total reductions that we targeted were 14 positions: 11 through reductions, three scheduled through sunsets, and that is money that was already ending as of the end of this fiscal year. The impact is seven at headquarters and seven in the regions. Then, through our strategic initiatives, we had five positions added back in. So the net difference is nine positions.

Within the operation of the Department of Executive, much like you’ll find with the Department of Aboriginal Affairs or even Finance or FMBS, because there’s not a lot of program dollars available, we do a lot of work with the people through our efforts. Our work was in trying to highlight how we can best still deliver and work with departments as well as deliver on some of the strategic initiatives and look at some of the relationships we have out there — for example, the Native Women’s Association — looking at those operations and proceeding on that basis and still trying to keep representation. For example, the regional director positions: we had five throughout the Northwest Territories, and we still felt there needed to be some coordination, so we downgraded it two: one north and one south. That’s the approach we have taken throughout this scenario. Unfortunately, yes, there is an impact on individuals as we go through this.

Thank you, Mr. Roland. It’s my pleasure to interrupt this conversation briefly and recognize in the gallery Master Timothy Riviere and his mother, Heather. Timothy is shaving his hair this weekend to raise dollars for cancer. He has already raised $1,500, and he’s extremely proud that his hair is long enough to have a wig

made for cancer patients. Let’s recognize Timothy. Welcome to the gallery.

Applause

Continuing on, Mr. Abernethy.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I was wondering if the Minister responsible for the Executive could tell me, of the 11 positions that are being eliminated, how many are vacant and how many actually have incumbents in them.

Thank you,

Mr. Abernethy. Mr. Roland.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I can have Mr. Ramsden provide that detail.

As we’ve noticed in some of the other departments, there are positions that are affected in ’09–10 that are appearing up from time to time. Are there any positions identified for reductions in ’09–10? Thank you, Mr. Chair.

All the positions identified for reduction will occur in ’08–09.

Now I’m going to go slightly off of my normal position questions, here, because I wasn’t sure where to ask this question. I think the appropriate place might be to ask the Executive because it’s a GNWT-wide question that I’d like to ask.

In looking at these Main Estimates, it looks like there’s a reduction of about 110 positions, which doesn’t seem to match some of the rhetoric we hear out there from the union and some of the talk within the government itself. I’m trying to get a sense of how many staff are truly affected within the GNWT. How many individual people have actually been affected?

I also notice, in going through this, that there have been an awful lot of positions created. So I’m wondering if the Department of the Executive did an analysis identifying the number of positions that are being eliminated and how many positions are being put back, and a comparison of how many vacant positions are being eliminated and how many positions with actual people are being affected. I’m just trying to get a global sense of the true position impact on the GNWT as a whole. I was wondering if any sort of analysis has been done on that. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I thank the Member for that question, because it does allow us to get to some of the overall large details. The total number of affected positions through this exercise — the

reductions that we spoke of — came out to just over 200. I believe it was 235, or I might be one or two off — 237, possibly. And out of them, over 80 positions were vacant. That reduced the number, in departments, of those that are potentially affected, and highlights other opportunities where vacant positions that were out there could be filled. The work is ongoing, and this is in flux every day, as we deal with potentially affected staff that indicate they want to look at other areas. We’re down to about 104 potentially affected staff. There are also staff members who are out there who have not engaged in discussing any other opportunities until they see the result of this budget exercise.

Outside of that, we had, through the strategic initiative side, an additional 14.5 jobs added, and those are to be filled once the budget gets passed.

The other bigger piece of the equation is that every year the government deals with a number of factors when we do our budget exercising. We look at forced growth, which is whether program delivery has increased because of demand — for example, the PTR ratio or Health and Social Services, when it comes to the actual delivery and we have to hire more people. Through a number of factors, each department has that forced growth piece. Then there are — in the old budgeting exercise it used to be called new initiatives — initiatives that departments would add from time to time.

The total package right now, and these are yet to…. Once approved, if everything makes it through, we’re adding another potential 124 positions for the GNWT. So between the new initiatives, forced growth and the other factors, we could be looking in the area of close to 140 more positions within the government of the Northwest Territories.

A hundred and twenty-four jobs: does that actually include some of the jobs that have been added back in here, or is that jobs that have been added back within the Mains as a result of those new initiatives and new things we’ve been talking about? Do they appear in here?

Mr.

Chairman, that hasn’t

taken into account any of the discussions we’ve been having in the Assembly regarding each department at this point. This is taking the information as the document was presented when we started — so the forced growth strategic initiatives and all the dollars that were added to it. This does not take into account decisions we’ll have yet to make around the motions committee has made in the Assembly.