Moving on to page 2-125, Activity Summary, Government Accounting, Grants and Contributions, Contributions: $9.885 million.

Financial Management Board Secretariat,

Activity Summary, Government Accounting, Grants and Contributions, Contributions: $9.885 million, approved.

Moving on to page 2-126, Government Accounting. Mr. Bromley.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just had a question, actually, on 2-124.

The Member is seeking unanimous consent to go back to page 2-124. Are there any nays?

Unanimous consent granted.

Right, we’ll go back to page 2-124. Mr. Bromley.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Again, just to be clear on the direction we’re headed and so on, given that the power subsidy has gone up about $1.5 million and we know what seems to be happening to fuel prices, has the FMBS ideas on what anticipated increases will be next year at all? Have they put some thinking into that?

Thank you,

Mr. Bromley. Minister Roland.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We do try to do some estimates looking at the environment around us. Of course, because of the power support program, we have one supplier in the sense of being the NWT Power Corporation. Our estimates right now…. As we plan this, we know we’re behind the times on this, as we’ve had the rate application approved. There’s talk of others, as we’ve heard. On our estimates right now we may have to come back for an additional $1.3 million in the future.

Thank you, Minister Roland. Are there any further questions on 2-124? We’ll move on, back to page 2-126, information item, Government Accounting.

Financial Management Board Secretariat,

Activity Summary, Government Accounting, information item, (page 2-126) approved.

Page 2-127,

information item, Government Accounting. Agreed?

Financial Management Board Secretariat,

Activity Summary, Government Accounting, information item, (page 2-127) approved.

Moving along to page 2-129, Activity Summary, Budgeting and Evaluation, Budget Summary. Agreed?

Financial Management Board Secretariat,

Activity Summary, Budgeting and Evaluation, Budget Summary, Expenditure Category: $1.579 million, approved.

Page 2-130, Activity Summary, Budgeting and Evaluation, Grants and Contributions, Grants: $62,000.

Financial Management Board Secretariat,

Activity Summary, Budgeting and Evaluation, Grants and Contributions, Grants: $62,000.

Page 2-132,

information item, Budgeting and Evaluation. Agreed?

Financial Management Board Secretariat,

Activity Summary, Budgeting and Evaluation, information item (page 2-132), approved.

Page 2-133,

information item, Budgeting and Evaluation. Agreed?

Financial Management Board Secretariat,

Activity Summary, Budgeting and Evaluation, information item (page 2-133), approved.

All right, moving along to page 2-135, Activity Summary, Audit Bureau, Budget. Ms. Bisaro.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just wanted to ask the Minister to explain the travel and materials and supplies amount. They go up here under the Audit Bureau, they went up under the previous section, and I noticed that for the overall department they’ve gone up.

The intention was to try and lower travel and materials and supplies budgeted amounts by 5 or 10 per cent, so I just wondered why these ones have gone up.

Thank you,

Ms. Bisaro. Minister Roland.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The Audit Bureau puts together a yearly audit plan and looks at areas that they would go out to audit,

whether it’s departments, regions or in the communities. With that in place, they build on that matter. To do those audits, we end up having to travel to the communities to get the actual information. So that’s why you see this one done differently.

As we know, we’ve got to continue to keep up the audit portion and ensure that departments are expending the money we approve in the appropriate manner.

Thank you, and understood. You know, I look at ’06–07, and travel has gone up $20,000 since then. Overall, the whole department has gone up or stayed the same in both of these categories. So I’ll leave it at that.

Mr. Chairman, the Financial Management Board does have a number of regional offices, as well, so that travel does incorporate some of that. But simply from the fact that to do the audits, whether it is ourselves or if we contract from time to time, we account for it in that manner.

It’s an area that we’ve looked at and that other parts of the department have looked at in trying to tighten up the area of travel and fees and supplies and that nature, but in a number of areas, because of our requirement to get the job done, we’ve not been able to do that. Thank you.

Thank you, Minister Roland. Page 2-135. Mr. Bromley.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I’ve heard that the Audit Bureau has, as many agencies do have, lots of difficulties keeping our auditor positions filled. I’m wondering if we can get a progress report on where we are on that, and if they’re not filled, if we contract work out, what happens to the salary dollars for those vacant positions?

Mr. Chairman, the area of the Audit Bureau: it has been challenging to try and have that fully staffed. In fact, the Audit Bureau has looked at a number of options of trying to hire: going through, I guess one would say, a recruitment process of taking those who are going through, for example, the universities, who may be in this field, offering them a work opportunity through the summer and then looking at bringing them online. So we’ve had junior auditors filling in some of the positions. We’ve moved internally in that area to try to fill the void that’s there.

We also have had the Audit Bureau come up with a human resource plan, as well, to look at how they can fulfill the mandate and still deliver on the service. So we use the funding in that area to look at the university students coming up or those who are in that field at a junior level to bring them in to fill the spots, and from time to time we do contract

different reports that we can. Depending on the level of the audit that we need, we do find that contracting can be more expensive than having our own staff.

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you, Mr. Roland. I just was inquiring, too, about what the current state of affairs is. How many of our auditor positions are filled with permanent staff?