Thank you, Madam Chair. What I will do is speak to the broad issues. There were a considerable number of very specific program areas that will be able to be addressed in detail with the Ministers coming to the table with their deputies on health, education, housing, environment, whatever the issue may be, but I will touch on as many of the big items as I can.
In regard to late tendering, once again, Madam Chair, we’re interested in the specifics, but overall, if when you ask the departments and you ask the government, we’ll tell you that we think this has been a distinct improvement, that we have, I think, a fairly high success rate in terms of getting projects out the door a lot sooner than we did with the old process where we were always a year behind and never passed our budget until springtime and sometimes later. We are interested in improving wherever we can, and there are clearly going to be circumstances where we didn’t hit the timelines that we wanted to, so be it highways or housing or whatever the issues are, we would be very interested in having that kind of discussion.
The issue of decentralization and devolution, we are very committed to both those key priorities. We have reviewed with committee and the Members the plan on decentralization. Basically, there are a number of phases. The first phase, as we’ve shown and laid out for you in this current business plan coming before the House here this winter, is to look at opportunities that now exist. Basically the low-hanging fruit, as it were, of some possible moves to those communities that are in a position to readily accept new positions and have the infrastructure to do that. That part of the ongoing work tied to devolution is going to come up with the organizational design and then work collectively with the second and third phases of moving those positions out that are deemed to be appropriate, hopefully, and functioning units so that they can operate effectively outside of Yellowknife.
Tied to that, on a peripheral note, Madam Chair, of course, is the benefit of having the fibre optic line
up and down the valley is that regardless of where we go in the North, then every community, especially larger centres as regional centres will have the same type of infrastructure and IT capacity and capability that Yellowknife has or that some of the southern communities have, which will make it that much easier to, in fact, be able to move positions and programs.
The carry-overs I will ask Mr. Aumond just to touch on briefly to give you some of the numbers that we have with us here today in terms of percentages going back over the years. Madam Chair, if I could ask for your indulgence.