Total executive offices, $163,000.

Moving to page 7, Executive, operations expenditures, Human Resources, not previously authorized, directorate, $526,000. Mr. Ramsay.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I know my colleague Mr. Abernethy was talking about departments and things that they could anticipate coming in the years I’ve been here, and years previous to that, my knowledge of collective bargaining with the UNW is something you can almost script. Every three years you’re going to have negotiations. You can go back and find out what you spent your money on three years ago and budget accordingly. I’m not sure why the $276,000 shows up via supplementary appropriation. I think it should be something the department budgets for every three years. They know it’s coming. It’s like clockwork; it’s going to happen and you should budget accordingly.

The $250,000 for a physicians’ contract, that’s something I believe we should know is coming as well, but that I can accept a little bit more readily than the contract negotiations with the UNW. I think we need to get a handle on what those costs are and budget for them and it shouldn’t come through a supp, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Not a question, but Mr. Miltenberger.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, this is one of the cases where the department was instructed to come back once the funds had been expended and there was an exact amount. The costs aren’t the same from Collective Agreement time to Collective Agreement time, nor are the folks that we hire to be negotiators or the costs that they may charge. I’ll maybe ask

Minister McLeod, responsible for HR, to speak a bit more about the process. Thank you.

Thank you, Minister Miltenberger. Minister Bob McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. As the Minister of Finance has indicated, the previous Financial Management Board direction has been that the cost of collective bargaining not be included in the base budget primarily because the costs don’t occur every year and they are variable from one collective bargaining cycle to another. So, for example, collective agreements could last from two years to four years. So it makes it difficult to predict when funding will be required.

But on a personal level, I should serve notice that we’ll be seeking ongoing funding for collective bargaining, because we feel that we should be in a much stronger position if we had base funding for collective bargaining built into our budget and we’ll be seeking funding for that purpose in the future. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Mr. Ramsay.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. If that’s the case and this is just the Department of HR, if that’s the case and the government’s attitude towards budgeting: figure out what it costs and come back to us later. That change in how we fund the supp reserve and going from $25 million to $10 million, that’s just not going to work. Obviously departments are going come back for more than $10 million. Specifically I’d like to ask the Minister, through you, Mr. Chairman, what exactly did HR spend the additional supp money on if they don’t have any money to be spending on the contract negotiations? Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Minister Miltenberger.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. According to the information that we’ve provided, there was $120,000 on corporate human resource services; employee services for $600,000; for increased costs associated with employee medical travel and dental costs, $400,000 for that; and addressing the pay and benefits backlog, $300,000, and they have $80,000 put towards the Human Resource Strategy and policy. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. What is the Minister’s strategy for dealing with the lowering of the supp reserve to $10 million, given the fact that you’re going to let departments continually come back for more money? How are departments going to be kept in check so that the $15 million that was dispersed or is going to be dispersed again next year to the departments, how are we

going to maintain that departments use that money for what they say they’re going to use it for and we’re not overspending our supp reserve by eight to 10 million dollars? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As I indicated when we previously met, we are of course looking for the advice of committee and Members. This is a new process, this is the first year. So we had the discussion over do you budget estimates into your actual budget or do you wait for them to come back.

I would point out, as well, that the growth of government is probably the lowest it’s been in this budget than it’s been in many a year, thanks to the work that was done in the last budget and carried forward to this budget. We’re very sensitive to trying to control our costs, especially now where we expect our revenues to be squeezed significantly. So we’ve chosen a path where we put the $15 million in. If upon review after one year and we want to make adjustments, we’d be more than happy to and interested in the feedback from committee and suggestions. Thank you.

I appreciate the Minister’s offer for suggestions. I’d be willing to take him up on that. Maybe we should be taking a look at the business planning process in its entirety and holding departments more accountable for what material is provided to Members during the business planning process and saying no. I mean, if FMB or Cabinet doesn’t want to say no, maybe the Regular Members would say no to some of this extraordinary spending that’s coming forward. I mean, that’s the type of discussion that we’re going to have to have, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, FMB does say no with some regularity. They have a fairly tight hand on the purse strings, but we know that there are pressures in program areas that are important to all of us. The issue of the business planning process we started with capital planning, last year we split it out for the first time and I agree with the Member where we want to look at how things are working and if we have to adjust and fine tune and we should be looking to do that before we get too far into spring. Thank you.

Thank you, Minister Miltenberger. Next I have Ms. Bisaro.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I want to express pretty much the same comments that were expressed earlier by Mr. Abernethy and Mr. Ramsay. I, too, have had great difficulty with the size of this supp as it has come forward. It was my expectation that with departments having a certain amount of money to sort of deal with on their own that it might reduce the amount of the

supplementary appropriations that have come forward and it has not. So I’m a little disappointed in that.

I think philosophically that giving money to the departments up front, giving the $15 million out is a good idea. I think we should continue to do that, but there has to be some change somewhere in either the mentality of departments or in the mentality of us here, similar to what Mr. Ramsay said. Maybe we have to say no once or twice to get people to wake up and recognize that no, you can’t always be asking for money and always get it.

With regards to HR and the two expenditures on this page, at the risk of being repetitive, I feel very much as Mr. Abernethy does and I’m really pleased to hear from Minister McLeod that they’re going to start asking for funding on an annual basis to fund negotiations. It’s my feeling that we ought to be able to at least approximate a certain amount of money that’s going to be required for negotiations in any year when we are doing contract negotiations. If it varies by $100,000 one way or the other, well, that’s to be expected, but we should at least be putting an amount into the budget to indicate that, yes, we are expecting to negotiate, and probably doing it over multi years is better than doing it at any one year in that it may, unlikely, but it may confuse the union as to what kind of money they are maybe going to be able to work with.

So I can accept these expenditures, but I don’t like it. I recognize that there are costs that we have to bear, but I would think that we need to plan better in the future. That’s all. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Minister Miltenberger.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Not wanting to chew anybody’s cabbage twice, I’ll just thank the Member for her comments and indicate once again that we’re interested to look at making this system as effective as possible for all of us, and that my own sense is, being around a while, is that these costs are going to be incurred, it’s just a matter of how we account for them, how accurately we can do it and how far ahead we can. Thank you.

Human Resources, $526,000.