A motion is on the floor. To the motion.

Question is being called. The motion is carried.

---Carried

Does committee agree that consideration for Committee Report 3-17(3), Standing Committee on Government Operations Report on the Review of the Office of the NWT Languages Commissioner Annual Report 2010-2011, be concluded?

Moving on to Committee Report 4-17(3), Standing Committee on Government Operations Report on the Review of the Status Report of the Auditor General of Canada to the Northwest Territories Legislative Assembly. Mr. Nadli.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The Standing Committee on Government Operations has presented its report on the Review of the Status Report of the Auditor General of Canada to the Northwest Territories Legislative Assembly. The committee’s report, which includes nine recommendations, was read into the record by the members of the committee. With the Assembly’s unanimous consent, the motion was passed to move the report into Committee of the Whole for discussion today.

The standing committee thanks the Auditor General of Canada and their staff for their work. The status report examines government’s progress in addressing specific recommendations from four previous performance audits. The recommendations concern programs and services of the Workers’ Safety and Compensation Commission, the Northwest Territories Housing Corporation, and the departments of Finance, Transportation, Public Works and Services, and Education, Culture and Employment.

While the Auditor General rated the government’s overall progress in acting on the recommendations of previous audits as satisfactory, the committee is concerned that this rating is really only a bare pass. Members were struck by the Auditor General’s observation that the NWT government’s ability to effectively manage programs was limited by three serious government-wide barriers:

1. inadequate information to manage programs

and make decisions;

2. insufficient monitoring of third-party program

delivery; and

3. an absence of detailed action plans clearly

setting out how and when organizations intend to implement recommendations made in the audit reports.

The standing committee strongly recommends a coordinated approach led by the Premier to tackle these barriers.

With regard to the Auditor General’s department-specific recommendations the committee was shocked to learn that some government inspected

daycare centres were not following health and safety requirements and the Department of Education has not set procedures for following up on the deficiencies. This is unacceptable and must be addressed immediately.

The Auditor General also found that the Northwest Territories Housing Corporation has not improved its monitoring of local housing organizations, and has not developed a strategic plan that identifies priorities and links actions to its mandate. The committee is confident that the Housing Corporation can, and will, improve in these areas.

Finally, the Department of Transportation and Department of Public Works and Services have taken steps to improve their contract administration. Nevertheless, preventable errors were found in one-third of the contracts audited. The committee expects both departments to show further progress within this fiscal year.

The committee commends the government organizations for their efforts to implement the Auditor General’s recommendations and urges them to make greater effort in the areas where the Auditor General found progress to be unsatisfactory or incomplete.

Thank you, Mr. Nadli. We’ll open up the floor to general comments. Question? Thank you. We’ll move to Ms. Bisaro.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I move that this committee recommends that the Premier and Department of Executive review the February 2012 Status Report of the Auditor General of Canada;

And further, that the Premier and Department of Executive coordinate the government’s response;

And further, that the Premier and Department of Executive propose solutions to overcome the three government-wide barriers to effective program management identified by the Auditor General.

Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Just give a second for that motion to circulate.

A motion is on the floor. To the motion. Ms. Bisaro.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to make a couple of comments here. This finding of the Auditor General is quite disturbing, I think. It also is an opportunity for the government to recognize that we have sort of a systemic problem within the government that’s been identified by the Auditor General. The work that the Auditor General does is thorough. I find it fair and I find that they

often see things that we don’t see ourselves, and that’s the value of having an outside organization look at our work and look at what we’re doing.

There are three key barriers that have been identified by the Auditor General, and the chair of the committee spoke to those in his opening remarks. They’re pretty fundamental, and they affect not just one department but they affect all departments, they affect the whole government. It was interesting to me that the Auditor General, in the audits that he has done over the last six years, found that these three barriers existed in all the programs of the departments that they had audited.

The committee recommendation here, I think, is important. I’d like to suggest that the Cabinet and Executive need to give it the credit and the importance that it’s due. The Auditor General, in his report, mentioned not once, but twice, that these systemic barriers exist. I think that many of these things, although maybe not couched in the same language, have been mentioned by Members in this Assembly but also many times by Members in the 16th Assembly, and I just want to emphasize again

that it’s time that the government listened.

These issues, as identified by the Auditor General, are across government. It’s not just one department that they refer to. It’s referring to almost every activity that we do. I feel that the Auditor General has placed the responsibility in the right place: on the shoulders of the Premier and the Department of the Executive, who are responsible for the government as a whole.

I really don’t have anything else to add. It is important and I would hope that other Members will recognize the importance of this. I hope that the Executive, the Cabinet and the executive branch will recognize the importance of this, and I hope that we will see some action from the Premier and his department that will give us some idea of how the government is going to address these three key barriers. Thank you

Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. To the motion.

Question has been called. The motion is carried.

---Carried

Ms. Bisaro.

Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. To the motion. Ms. Bisaro

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I would like to just explain this motion a little bit. Certainly, the Workers' Safety and Compensation Commission has made some improvements. They were audited, the first in this group of departments that were audited by the Auditor General. I think it was in 2006, if I remember rightly. So they’ve had quite a bit of time to look at the recommendations from the Auditor General’s report in 2006, and have had a fair bit of time to respond, and from the Auditor General’s remarks they’ve responded quite well. But that said, there were still some gaps, and this motion goes to the particular areas that are still lacking within the WSCC that the Auditor General saw. They could be seen to be minor, but quality assurance is never minor, and that’s why it’s referenced here.

The other item that’s mentioned is a process for approving and communicating changes to its claims processing procedures. That’s an internal communication, basically, within the organization, and the Auditor General found that a change might be made in one area which was not communicated to the whole of the organization and people in another area weren’t aware of it. They’re not as dire as the gaps that were mentioned in the first motion that I made, but it is important that the WSCC recognize that by making these improvements, they’re only going to make themselves a better organization and provide better service to our residents. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. To the motion.

Question has been called. Carried.

---Carried

Mr. Nadli.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I move that this committee recommends that the Northwest Territories Housing Corporation continue its efforts to collect mortgage receivables;

And further, that the Northwest Territories Housing Corporation report annually to this House on the number of clients who have chosen a repayment option, the total dollar amount of repayments, and the total amount still outstanding as of April 1st each

year, starting with the data as of April 2012. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Nadli. To the motion.

Question has been called. The motion is carried.

---Carried

Mr. Nadli.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I move that this committee recommends that the Northwest Territories Housing Corporation meet its obligations for consistent and thorough monitoring of local housing organizations under the universal partnership agreements, either by finding the resources to conduct annual assessments of operations, or by changing the agreements to specify some other form of structured and scheduled monitoring, with follow-up in cases of noncompliance;

And further, that the Northwest Territories Housing Corporation improve its monitoring of and support to local housing corporations in allocating public housing, to ensure all applications are consistently point-rated and adequate documentation is on file to support allocation decisions within the 2012-2013 fiscal year;

And further, that the NWT Housing Corporation improve its monitoring, verification and consolidation of public housing unit condition ratings in order to obtain a complete picture of the condition of its public housing portfolio within the 2012-2013 fiscal year;

And further, that the NWT Housing Corporation fulfill its statutory responsibility to ensure that information on the condition of its public housing is

publicly available by preparing and submitting annual reports to the Minister for tabling in this House in a timely manner, with all previous years’ reports submitted by the end of the 2012-2013 year. Thank you.