Thank you, Mr. Chairman. In terms of Health being off limits and questions being discouraged, I would suggest that if we checked Hansard, speaking as a Minister of Health for five years, my recollection, as it is today, is just in this House, on a constant basis, the Health Minister tends to top the questions in this House on an ongoing basis. It doesn’t matter which Minister you pick, which Assembly you pick.
We have a circumstance. We are talking about how do we budget. The debate is, do you budget on actual or do you budget on estimates. The Member talks about accountabilities and you want to be able to have some oversight, and I’m indicating to the Member and to this House again, in the past over time, budgeting on estimates has been determined to be not the most efficient way if you want to have clear accountability, if you want to have precision in
the money being required. There’s money to do your operation. Over time budgets have increased, but there’s not the automatic increase. There’s been a request by Cabinet, by the FMB, I think by Members over time that when they spend the money, let them come back and we will look at giving them money to cover that off based on actual. We’re not going to just take it on word that they estimate that they need a million but they’re only going to spend three-quarters and then we have to figure out how we get the other $250,000 back.
If there’s a decision as a government or as a Legislature that we’re going to change our budgeting processes, all departments will come forward with your best estimate on how much it’s going to cost you do to business and what you’re going to need to do business. I would suggest there would be some significant potential for fiscal creep in all areas. That’s a discussion that can be had.
The Members speak about accountability. The supplementary appropriation process, we have to be able to come back and defend what those costs are and be able to demonstrate how we spent the money and what drove those costs in any given year. Thank you.