Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. The honourable Premier, Mr. Roland.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The area of the merit pay or performance pay is one that has been raised a number of times by the Member and did reference, for example, the work the federal government was doing and if we could incorporate some of that work into the Northwest Territories. I have been working with the Department of Human Resources. The Minister of Human Resources is getting as much of the information together that we could use and try to find out if there are some comparisons here. We do have some numbers and I will share those with the Member in response to the written question. More importantly, the fact that the federal system changed the ratings of deputies, they created another level of deputy ministers, gave a substantial increase in pay and then changed their bonus system or at-risk payment as well. So they have two levels of combination at-risk pay and bonuses for their deputies ranging from 10 to 30 percent in one area and, as well, for bonuses, another 6 to 9 percent that the federal government works.

Here in the Northwest Territories we have one system. It’s part of the contract we sign with our deputies and it goes from 0 to 15 percent with the Northwest Territories. We do have four different policies that affect deputy ministers, senior managers, excluded employees and, of course, the UNW. What we use on the executive manager side are four criteria and it is contributions to the achievement of corporate results, contribution achievement to ministerial results and Minister results, demonstration of some management practices and other contributions of an outstanding nature. So those make up the review that is done specifically, I would say, for the deputies that I did do the work on. Thank you.

I would like to thank the Premier for that. It is good to hear that there are some parameters and programs in place to help us determine who is going to get bonuses. I am curious, though. I am familiar with the excluded employee programs and procedures around bonuses, but with the senior management, more particularly the deputy heads, in assessing whether or not the individuals are going to get bonuses, what types of performance targets are put in place to determine who is going to be eligible for bonus and who isn’t? How do you determine how much of

a bonus in that range you’ve identified from 3 to 15 percent that an individual is going to get? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, the process is one of an assessment that is done. That assessment is sent to the secretariat of the Cabinet and reviewed at first level, and I review that as well. It is to see their stated achievements, and the achievements would be based on the previous report that was done and what they were trying to do, as well as highlighted achievement of corporate results being budget process, what the direction of government was given, the ministry results if we made a change in acts. So those are weighed against the direction that was given, how much work was supplied or done and ranking in that area. Now, I must say it was 0 to 15 percent, not 3 to 15, and not all deputies received merit pay this time around. Thank you.

I apologize for that. Zero to 15 percent sounds better than 3 to 15 percent. In the fiscal years 2003-04 to 2006-07, there are 14, 17, 19 and 23 deputy ministers or senior managers eligible for bonuses. In those same years, 14, 16, 19 and 21 got bonuses. So for the most part, we have been paying all of our deputy ministers and senior managers bonuses. You are saying this year that not all of them got it. Can you give me a rough idea of how many received senior manager or deputy minister bonuses and how many didn’t? No, that is probably coming in the other thing, but I am wondering if he knows off the top of his head. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

We have 16 deputy minister-level contracts and 75 percent of those received merit pay. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. The honourable Member for Mackenzie Delta, Mr. Krutko.

Mr. Speaker, in my statement, I made reference to the Mackenzie Aboriginal Corporation and they recently had a trip to Ottawa in which they are trying to convince the federal government that there is a possibility of a project to complete the Mackenzie Valley Highway up the Mackenzie Valley from Wrigley all the way up to Tuktoyaktuk. Mr. Speaker, that issue has been around for some time. We tried to put it in the light of the pipeline application in which the pipeline companies did not want anything to do with it. But I believe that, through this partnership that has been established through the Mackenzie Aboriginal Corporation, they are trying to bring it forward by way of a P3 project and they will construct it, build it

and move forward. I would like to ask the Minister of Transportation exactly what is the relation between the Mackenzie Aboriginal Corporation and the Department of Transportation to moving this project ahead.

Thank you, Mr. Krutko. The honourable Minister of Transportation, Mr. Michael McLeod.

Mr. Speaker, we don’t have a partnership with the Mackenzie Aboriginal Corporation. We have reviewed their information and have acknowledged the work that they have done. We don’t really have a formal partnership. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, we are pushing a lot of projects in the North in regard to hydro for diamond mines. We are pushing the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline, but when it comes to this highway, it seems like there is very little by way of investment in the budgets. I would like to ask the Minister how much money has the government put into looking at the engineering design of such a proposal. Has any work and expenditures been put forward on this project?

It would take some considerable work to put everything that we have done historically on this section of road. In the time that I have been here in the 14th , 15th , 16th Assembly, we will have put in 39 bridges on the Mackenzie Highway, along with a lot of big work, a lot of improvements of the structure of the highway. We have also compiled a lot of information in terms of baseline. We put together a number of strategies. I think I can count four off the top of my head that included the Mackenzie Valley Highway. We have taken many, many trips to Ottawa. In fact, we have raised it with three different Ministers and the Prime Minister since January. The Premier has had discussions over this issue and has raised it at almost every venue that he has attended. To get an actual figure on how much work has been done would take some time and we certainly could put that together but we would have to take the time needed to compile it. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, one of the issues that came from our meeting this morning with Mr. Nerysoo is that the federal government’s impression of the Government of the Northwest Territories for support of this project is that we are not supporting this project. I would like to ask the Minister exactly, in regard to the meetings, he talked about and the investment of such a project. I think that in order for it to proceed, we do have to be seen to be not only mentioning it at our meetings or show it either on the floor of the House by way of motion but, more importantly, people will really see you are invested in this project by the capital

investment that is going into this project. What are the plans from this government to make a capital investment in regard to the Mackenzie Valley Highway by way of an engineering design or working with the Mackenzie Aboriginal Corporation to move this project forward?

I would be hard pressed to be convinced that the federal government doesn’t know that this is a priority item. As I indicated, we have raised it twice in the short period that we have been into this new year. We have raised it as a sovereignty issue. We raised it as a possible P3 project. We looked at it through devolution and resource revenue sharing. We looked at it through partnership opportunity. We looked at it and presented it as an economic stimulus project. We will continue to look at ways we can bring this forward. I am sure the federal government is completely aware how important this project is to the North. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Your final supplementary, Mr. Krutko.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I think we may be asking for too many asks from the federal government, so I would like to ask the Minister, are you willing to come forward with a stand-alone proposal for the Mackenzie Highway extension from Wrigley to Tuktoyaktuk working with the Mackenzie Aboriginal Corporation, approach the federal government on one solicited proposal on this mega project? Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, I think we have done that about three times or four times. We plan to update our information on our highway initiatives and we will certainly take the Member’s advice. It is something that we had looked at doing, put an independent proposal on the Mackenzie Valley Highway. Once we have compiled the additional information that we are permitted to do, we are looking at an economic analysis that would lend to our business case. We are also doing some more environmental scoping and also some additional baseline studies. We will add that to our package and continue to strengthen our business case and present that to the federal government once more to demonstrate that this is an important project for us, as the Member has raised, for his riding and for all the communities across the North and the Mackenzie Valley. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Krutko. The honourable Member for Sahtu, Mr. Yakeleya.

Mr. Speaker, I want to raise some questions to the Minister of NTPC in terms of the ATCO unsolicited proposal. I certainly hope that when we have some time to review this proposal, once the due diligence is done with it, that we have some pretty good direction as to how we proceed with it. I want to ask the Minister if he is aware of the Yukon experiences where ATCO did a joint venture with the Yukon Power Corp in terms of their partnerships. I had some questions about the power rates in the Yukon and whether that was a good deal in terms of power rates increasing in the Yukon.

Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. The honourable Minister responsible for the Northwest Territories Power Corporation, Mr. Roland.

Mr. Speaker, we are aware of the relationship that is in the Yukon that exists today. As we do our review on the proposal, we will be getting all the necessary information that we need. I have also requested time with committee to have a discussion on this, and wait to do that. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, we certainly look forward to when the time comes when we have some electrifying debates with the Minister regarding the ATCO proposal. Mr. Speaker, I would ask the Minister how he’s going to engage the communities and regions with the possibility -- just the possibility -- of the potential merger of ATCO and NTPC. How would the communities and regions be engaged in this process?

Mr. Speaker, the process we’re involved in right now at this stage is to review the proposal to get the information together. The report will come back to myself and then I’ll sit down with Cabinet to decide if we do fully engage in this and sit down with Members at that time as well. This is not meant to go out to all the communities for their discussion. The GNWT is the sole shareholder. We have much experience, whether it is from department, for example, the Territorial Power Support Program, the Power Corporation itself as well as the other power operations in the Northwest Territories. There is a lot of information that we’ll need to go through first before we make any decisions on how to proceed. Once we have that, as I said already, before we even get to that stage I’m hoping to get some time with committee to go through this. Following that, we’ll be keeping everybody up to speed as to how things have gone. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, certainly the Regular Members on this side will look forward to that discussion with the Premier.

In terms of timeline, is this something that we’re looking at -- I supposedly make that presumption -- within the life of this government in terms of this potential proposal? We’re not too sure if it will go or not, and I guess after the Regular Members have been involved in discussion, I guess maybe my question is then is it something within the framework of possibility of having some discussions with communities and the regions in terms of this meeting or is it just going to stay within the Assembly here with the Members and have some further discussion? My understanding, from what I’m hearing from the Premier, is that it’s not being entertained at this time to look at the regions or go into the communities and regions.