Thank you, Mr. Chair. I guess our end goal is we want all citizens in the smaller communities to have access to government services. I’ll have to go back and check at all the communities. I don’t have any government representation, or very limited government representation, to see what our end goal is so far. To date, where we’ve been able to find some resources, we’ve been trying to establish government services officers. The last time I checked, we were up to 13 government service officers. I imagine there are probably at least seven other communities that might need government services officer positions.

Thanks to the Premier for that information. We’re doing three in this budget year that we’re discussing, so is it the intention of the department to add another two or three every year until we reach the complement of where we want to get to?

I think the approach that we’ve been taking is that if there were resources that became available, either through greater efficiency or through restructuring, we’ve been converting it to GSOs, at least certainly in Executive. I don’t think we’re taking the position that we’re going to go and ask for additional dollars to create GSOs. That certainly wasn’t our intention. As resources became available and we could make the case to convert it, we were doing so.

Thank you for the explanation. That’s a great way to go with not having to ask for new dollars, but I guess I would encourage the department to make sure that if we don’t find efficiencies, that we do make sure that we expand into all the communities where we don’t have government representation, because it seems to be a very effective method of providing service to our residents.

I wanted to ask a couple of questions about the program review office. One of the statements in the description of the office, the last sentence, talks about the office helping to build evaluation capacity, and I believe that references the other departments within government. I would just like to know from the Executive, from their perspective, how are we doing at building evaluation capacity within our other departments, because that has been known to be a problem, some departments worse than

others, but it’s an ongoing problem, I think, that we have. How are we doing at building up evaluation capacity? Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. For that we’ll go to Mrs. Ballantyne.

Thank you, Mrs. Ballantyne. Ms. Bisaro.

Thanks, Mr. Chair, and thanks, Mrs. Ballantyne. The program review office has been in place and in effect for a number of years now. I wonder if I could get an idea of a number of projects or the number of reviews, I guess, that the department does in any one year. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. We’ll go to Premier McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. On average, it’s about six a year.

The other thing I wanted to ask here, is I had gathered that the PRO, program review office, has established a work plan. I’d like to know is it an annual work plan or is it a multi-year work plan.

It’s a three-year board plan, so I guess it’s a multi-year plan. Thank you.

Thanks for that info. I’m glad to see that we are not doing just year by year. I think a multi-year or three year or whatever it is work plan is a good thing.

My next question has to do with whether or not the work plan of the program review office is a public document. I think there would be a lot of people, both within government and without, I think, who would be interested in knowing what we are reviewing, what things are coming up. We may even get input which tells us that we’re moving in the wrong direction. So is this going to be a public

document, the program review office’s work plan? Thank you.

It was not our intention to make it a public document. We had shared it with committee and asked committee to submit their priority areas, which we were pleased to get feedback from committee. But as of now it is not our intention to make it public. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Just a comment here, I guess, in response. To the Premier, I would suggest that you seriously consider making it a public document. We talk about wanting to be transparent, we want to be accountable to residents and so on, and there’s this sort of perception out there, rightly or wrongly, that the government is a great big bureaucracy, and inefficient, and wasting money and time and effort and so on. So this may be one way that we can show NWT residents that, yes, we are actually efficient and these are the things that we’re looking at. Again, it may be an opportunity for us to get something from our residents which is going to help us out and help us become more efficient. We may get steered in a direction that we haven’t thought of. So I would encourage the department to consider making this document public. Just a comment. Thanks, Mr. Chair.

If committee makes a recommendation for us to look at it, we’ll look at it. The information that comes out of the public review sometimes is very sensitive information. In the past, committee and government haven’t seen that as the way to go, but if committee wants to look at doing this, certainly we would look at it. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Just one last comment. I wasn’t asking for the work of the PRO to necessarily be public – as much as possible, yes – but I’m talking about the work plan, what this division is planning on doing and what things they’re going to be looking at. Thanks, Mr. Chair.

We’ll look at it and see why we weren’t making it public in the first place. So we’ll take it under consideration. Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Committee, 2-22, Executive, activity summary, executive operations, grants and contributions, grants, total grants, $350,000. Ms. Bisaro.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. I have to ask a question here with regard to the NGO Stabilization Fund. This amount for this fund has stayed the

same, certainly for these three years that we can see, and I don’t think it’s been increased since its inception. I think the Minister is well aware, and I think the department is well aware, that there are huge demands from our NGOs for extra funds over and above what they either fundraise for themselves or manage to get from various and sundry program grants or other grants elsewhere.

I’d like to know, first of all, whether the Minister considers the demands for funds that come from these NGOs on an annual basis when they apply for this fairly paltry amount of money, does the Minister recognize that these demands are just and that we need to do more than what we are doing to help our NGOs. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Premier McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yes, we recognize that and we have been reviewing our program and we want to make sure that this amount of money is focused on what we call the real NGOs. I think we’ve made improvements in that area in the last few years. Thank you, Mr. Chair.