Total department, not previously authorized, $2.098 million.

Does committee agree that we have concluded consideration of Tabled Document 53, Supplementary Appropriation, No. 2, 2011-2012?

Mrs. Groenewegen.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chair, I move that consideration of Tabled Document 53-16(6), Supplementary Estimates (Infrastructure Expenditures), No. 2, 2011-2012, be now concluded, and that Tabled Document 53-16(6) be reported and recommended as ready for further consideration in formal session through the form of an appropriation bill.

The motion is in order. To the motion.

Question is being called.

---Carried

Tabled Document 53 is now concluded.

As we agreed, we are now dealing with Tabled Document 54-16(6), Supplementary Estimates (Operations Expenditures), No. 2, 2011-2012. At this time I’d like to ask the Minister if he has any opening comments. The Minister of Finance, Mr. Miltenberger.

I am here to present Supplementary Estimates (Operations Expenditures), No. 2, 2011-2012. This document outlines an increase of $14.310 million in operations expenditures for the 2011-2012 fiscal year.

The major items included in the supplementary estimates are:

1. $6.012 million for a special warrant approved on

June 29, 2011, for the Department of Environment and Natural Resources to fund the shortfall for forest fire suppression due to a severe forest fire season in 2011.

2. $2.296 million for the Department of Executive

to support transition and implementation activities related to the Devolution and Resource Revenue Sharing Agreement-in-Principle. This amount will be partially offset by revenues of $1.171 million from the federal government.

3. $4.910 million for the Department of Health and

Social Services to provide contribution funding to the Beaufort-Delta Health and Social Services Authority and the Stanton Territorial Health Authority for extraordinary costs that contributed to the 2009-10 and 2010-11 deficits in these authorities. This amount will be fully

offset by accumulated operating surpluses in other health and social services authorities.

4. $725,000 for the Department of Environment

and Natural Resources to support negotiations with respect to transboundary water agreements, which is identified as a priority under the NWT Water Strategy.

I am prepared to review the details of the supplementary appropriation document.

Mr. Minister, just to be on the public record, could you introduce your witness, please.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have with me Sandy Kalgutkar, acting deputy minister of Finance.

Thank you, Minister. Welcome, witness. Any general comments in regard to the supplementary appropriation bill? Mr. Ramsay.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I may sound like a broken record, but I’m going to state this again for the record. There are a couple of items in here that it seems on an annual basis cause the Government of the Northwest Territories some trouble when it comes to budgeting.

The first one is the special warrant for $6.012 million approved on June 29th . How we budget for

fire suppression in our territory has been an issue going back over the eight years that I’ve been here. I don’t think we budget enough. Obviously, in the past few years we’ve come back for substantially more money than what is budgeted. I don’t understand, either, why a special warrant would have to be issued halfway through the summer. Obviously, fires don’t stop at the end of June and they continue on into August, and maybe we should take a final tally and clean it all up with one move instead of just doing one halfway through the summer. It doesn’t make a lot of sense on how that happens. Again, I think we really need to examine how we budget for forest fire suppression in our territory.

Like I said, it’s overdue that we look for more money in this area instead of going to special warrant and supplementary appropriations whenever necessary because of certainly an underfunded amount of money in the Department of ENR. I’d be supportive of us trying to find some more money and budget that more appropriately.

The second item that I’m going to just speak briefly about -- I know Members have heard me talk about this time and time again over the past eight years – is how we budget the health authorities across the Northwest Territories has been an issue not only for the current Minister of Health and Social Services, the Minister of Finance happens to be the same guy, the government. We really need to come up

with a game plan on governance and how the scarce health dollars are spent in our territory. I don’t think we can continue to allow these huge deficits to run up in some authorities and then try to take money from other authorities and move it around. It’s basically just a shell game. It’s not a permanent solution.

The concern at Stanton obviously is that it’s underfunded. It has been for the past years I’ve been here. We need to come up with a more permanent fix to this instead of just throwing millions of dollars at it whenever we see fit, or have a few extra dollars, or taking money from other authorities and moving it to authorities that require an influx of cash. It’s not the way a government should be budgeting. It’s not conducive to good government. It’s a practice that I think we should try to minimize whenever we can.

Again, a permanent fix. I’ve said it before, I’ve been critical of this, we have to come up with a new way to govern health care in the Northwest Territories. Have regional management boards but take the budgeting and dollars that we have and have it under one roof instead of all these authorities across the territory with some running surpluses and some running deficits. I think, from a human resource perspective, we’d also see some savings in that area as well. I just continue to be disappointed that the government isn’t trying to come up with more of a permanent fix on health care. It’s going to become even more of an important issue as we move forward, and the strains and demands that are going to be placed on our health care system grow. We don’t have the dollars to deal with that, so we have to ensure that, like I said, every dollar we spend is going to be spent effectively and authorities are going to be budgeted the way they should. We need to come up with a new way forward and this certainly isn’t it.

Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Minister Miltenberger.

The issue of the fire budget is one that I agree with the Member has come up on a regular basis. As we’ve discussed in the past, there was a decision made to fund it at the lower level and have them come back once they could demonstrate and had some idea of what the costs were going to be. There were some good suggestions from committee that we’ve made note of. For example, using a 10-year running average is one possible way to look at a more realistic fire budget. We’ll consider all those as we look at the upcoming budget year.

With regard to the health and social services system, once again I will point out that across the land every jurisdiction is challenged by issues in the health and social services system. Specifically, we have our own challenges. We have taken steps to address the concern about surpluses. At the same

time we’re coming back repeatedly for supplementary appropriations.

The work of governance, as the Member indicated, has not been concluded in spite of the efforts of this Assembly. It will come up again in the coming Assembly. We are also looking at a wide variety of processes that we’ve dealt with with the Social Programs committee in terms of trying to improve how we do business.

One of the broader issues that I mentioned, as well, which I think has enormous potential for the Northwest Territories in health as well as a whole number of areas, is the fibre optic line up the valley to Inuvik that would allow us to fully use some of the resources we’ve put in place, such as telehealth.

I agree with the Member that we are going to have to continue to look at all these efficiencies. There are ways to better coordinate, absolutely, the business of the authorities, the administration side, the back office side, and we are taking steps to try to initiate that work as well.

That’s good, Mr. Chairman. I thank the Minister for that. Again I think it’s an important issue and it can’t continue to be downplayed and overlooked.

General comments. Next I have Ms. Bisaro and then Mrs. Groenewegen. Ms. Bisaro.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have similar comments with regard to this supplementary appropriation. I, too, have expressed before and I still feel that we budget for our forest fire suppression completely wrongly. I think our residents and constituents understand sort of a home budget where you estimate what you’re going to spend and then you budget for that amount of money. What we do here for forest fire suppression is we budget for the absolute minimum, knowing full well that by the time we have mobilized our forces, the minimum has been spent and there’s going to be a need to come back for extra funds.

The Minister has said that there were some good suggestions at committee and I’m very pleased to hear now that they will be considered. It would seem to me that funding the forest fires suppression budget on a 10-year average amount would probably be quite successful and it would certainly leave us with a better idea of what it’s going to cost us.

There are pretty much two items in this particular bill which make up this supplementary appropriation and one of them is the $6 million for the forest fire suppression budget and the other is $1.1 million, give or take, for devolution AIP. Those two items are about $7.8 million, and with the amount that we have in our reserve fund, which is four-point-something million dollars, we’re left in the hole for

about $3.1 million. We are not even halfway through this budget year and we are already in the hole in terms of our reserve. So should we encounter any further emergencies in the rest of the budget year, we are going to go further in the hole. I know that things certainly are not going to fall apart, but what it means is that we are probably going to have to borrow money along the way in order to keep our budget in line.

If after the department considers some of the suggestions with regard to the forest fire suppression budget and they decide to continue with the sort of policy that they have now, which is to budget for a minimal amount of money, my recommendation to the department is that a portion of the reserve at the beginning of any budget year must be set aside and allocated to forest fire suppression, because we’ve got a reserve and we know we need money for forest fire suppression, so we need to allocate a specific portion of the reserve for that purpose. It will then let us know upfront how the budget is going to play out. What we do now is budget for the minimum but then we also expect the reserve to cover all contingencies and don’t recognize at the outset that we’re going to have to spend more money for fire.

I really don’t have any other comments than that. Many of the other items that are here in this bill are offset by other revenues, and that’s a good thing. I seriously encourage the department to reconsider how we budget, especially for forest fire suppression.

Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Mr. Miltenberger.

I, once again, appreciate the Member’s comments. The one thing that’s difficult to get an average on, of course, is, while we can do it for the money, is the weather.

If I could just point to British Columbia for the previous two fire seasons where they had a budget in the neighbourhood of $50 million and had these extraordinary weather conditions where they spent nearly $500 million. That’s part of the challenge. But I take the point of the Members that the base budget is too low. We know that come July even just the starting of costs is going to put us close to exhausting our budget. I make note of those concerns.

Some of these other investments in the supplementary appropriation are good investments. We didn’t really count on it because we didn’t know it was coming. For example, the Inuvik school is going to possibly save us money and allows the project to be completed sooner. It’s a cash flow issue, not so much as a cash issue. We’re challenged to be able to respond to those kinds of good investments that put pressure on us in the short term but in the long run are to our collective benefit.

General comments, Ms. Bisaro.