Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Menicoche.

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Certainly, I was just trying to get around if there is a standard design plan that would offer Fort Simpson, like, I think there was a standard design for Fort Providence, and I think in, oh, I forget. I think it was Lutselk'e. I don’t know if there’s another specific design that’s being offered there, or is it all the same design? What I’m getting at is that many years ago I went to Alaska and I saw their Aboriginal-built hospital. It was very welcoming. It had lots of Aboriginal culture attached to it visually as you go through.

I would just like to know what is the department’s view of designing a new replacement health centre to take into account the cultural needs of over 60 percent of the Aboriginal population that are in and around Fort Simpson.

As the Member is aware, back in 2011-12 we put a bit of a delay on the planning study so that we could complete the planning study for Norman Wells as Norman Wells also provides to sort of a regional health centre. Some of the designs that we get from our consultation in Norman Wells will be incorporated into Fort Simpson. We would also be specific to what the community wants in Fort Simpson, as well, so there is certainly room for consultation from the community.

In Hay River, when we built the health centre, there was opportunity for community input, so this will be the same thing. Fort Simpson will certainly have input in how the health centre is designed and built in Fort Simpson.

Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. The Member for Hay River South, Mrs. Groenewegen.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to follow up on some of the questions today around the population growth strategy, the questions that were already asked earlier. I have never seen the population growth strategy. Since there doesn’t seem to be one in writing, I’d like to suggest some subtitles: Get People, Keep People, Make People, Extend People.

Now, I seriously have some suggestions under each one of these.

Get People: When it comes to getting people, does anybody actually keep an eye on labour markets? Like, we talked about the commercial fishery closing in Alberta. There is a group in a specialized industry. We’ve got two million pounds of fish, a sustainable harvest floating around in Great Slave Lake every year which never seems to get brought in. I mean, are there any people in any department? Like, where are the people that are working on the growth strategy, population growth strategy? I mean, are there people who are working on specific initiatives such as looking at labour markets in other jurisdictions? The oil patch, they’re laying off tens of thousands of people. We need people up here in different disciplines. Is anybody actually working on getting people? What are you doing?

Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. The Minister of Finance, Mr. Miltenberger.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We have a committee of Cabinet that includes ECE, it includes ITI, Finance, Environment and Natural Resources, just about every department is represented around the table. We’re working on those types of things, the labour market information. We’re tracking the work on the Nominee Program being shepherded and looked at by a Minister. Minister Lafferty will be making an announcement in the House. The commercial fisher piece, we’ve got the money in the budget. The question of are we doing stuff, yes, we’ve also set up a committee that involves all the key industry players, members of the chamber to look at ways that we can collectively pool our efforts and combine our efforts to hit that target of 2,000 in five years.

I’m sensing that some people on this side of House would like to help you out with that, and if they could see something in writing, perhaps we could make some valuable contributions to that initiative, to that strategy.

Now, on to the topic of keeping people. Seven hundred people left the Northwest Territories last

year, but because of a high birthrate, that was offset to a larger extent.

Is there any way of tracking why people are leaving the Northwest Territories? I don’t know. I know you can’t do exit interviews, but is it possible there’s any way to find out why people are leaving? I mean, we can guess. The cost of living, we can guess. But do we have any way of collecting that data?

Yes, we do track that, and we have some ideas and we get some feedback. A lot of it is the issue of family; some of it is the cost of living; some of it is retirement.

In regard to the Member’s earlier comment of an interest of committee, we’d be happy to get all and any suggestions that committee members have in terms of their suggestions, and if there are other suggestions in terms of involvement in the work we’re doing, we’d be happy to look at what they would propose as well.

Under the topic of making people, we have some young families in the South Slave that are having, like, four and five children, and I have a guess that there would be more people having larger families if we had something comparable to the child tax credit, but something made in the North.

Has the Cabinet ever contemplated a way of supporting young families who want to have larger families in helping them in some way financially through something similar to what the federal government does with the child tax credit, something made in the North?

That issue of some type of enhanced encouragement to address the issue the Member has referred to, increasing our population through birthrate, we’ve had some initial looks at it. We haven’t reached any definitive decisions yet of how we would do that in a way that would really promote that and it would actually show value. We know that in Quebec, I think they offered $3,000 per child. It’s something that’s on our to-do list. We’ve been focusing on some of the more immediate things, but it’s something that has been brought forward.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Final, short supplementary, Mrs. Groenewegen.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Under the topic of extending people, we all know about the demographic bubble of the baby boomers and the people are aging, and we just heard a statistic this week that if people actually make it to pensionable age, the now anticipated age of people who are on a pension is like 89 for men and 91 for women. Anyway, we have got to address that demographic, that growing demographic of seniors who would stay in the Northwest Territories if there was a wider variety of options for them in terms of

accommodation. Not just public housing but accommodation with caregivers that people could actually, who could afford to, contribute financially to.

Where are we at in working to try and find ways to accommodate older people to keep them here longer so they don’t have to go south to those types of accommodations that they would like?

That issue was flagged in the budget address as well. We do a significant number of things already. We are putting some money in this budget to try to extend the staffing complements in Yellowknife, Simpson and, I believe, Fort Smith for starters. But we want to and we already do a number of things for seniors.

I appreciate the Member’s concern and we are intending on looking at those longer term changes, as well, that we need to deal with as this bubble moves through their lifecycle.

The actuarial tables may have the average person living to 89 for men, for example. The folks, if you do it based on occupation, it tends to be a lot shorter. Politicians, people in high-stress jobs, so if you make it to retirement, if you can grab a fraction of that 89, we’ll be lucky, but knock on wood. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Member for Frame Lake, Ms. Bisaro.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are addressed to the Minister of Finance and I’d like to put some questions to him on the Program Review Office.

We got notification this last week that the Program Review Office had established two standing offer agreements. They were for program monitoring and evaluation services and for program design. I look at the Finance website under the Program Review Office and it says, “The office was established to help advance the goal of effective and efficient government by conducting a systematic review of government programs and services.” The other paragraph says, “The GNWT has established the Program Review Office as an internal resource to support the ongoing review and reporting of all government and activity.”

I look at this notice of standing offer agreements, one for program monitoring and evaluation services and the other one for program design, and it makes me ask the question, what is the Program Review Office staff doing? Why do we need these two standing offer agreements? Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Minister of Finance, Mr. Miltenberger.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Program Review Office I think has, if my memory serves me correctly, four people. We have 5,000 employees, about 11 or so departments, quite a number of significant sized other agencies, colleges, power corporations, Crown corporations and the sheer volume of things that need to get done require that we need to bring in, from time to time, outside resources because it’s physically impossible for that small number of people to do all the work that’s needed, the work that they’re currently doing as well as try to address some of these bigger, broader issues. Thank you.

Thanks to the Minister and I guess I thought it was a rather larger little section than that, only four people. My recollection is that the budget was something like $800,000, but I could stand to be corrected on that.

So, I guess I’d like to know from the Minister, then, in the area of program design, and I presume that goes to making things more efficient and presumably saving us money, which is what this office was intended to do, what role does the Program Review Office play in program design and increasing efficiency in program services? Thank you.

When they are asked to be involved or they are involved, they work with the host department or agency and they look at being efficient, not necessarily to save money but to make sure that they are designed in such a way to put the money they do have to the best, most efficient and effective use, and that’s one of the functions they provide. They provide a coordinating function; they provide a function where they can link in and get the people they may need to help work with the departments, to do the detailed planning in terms of the effectiveness of the design, the horizontal and vertical issues with reporting relationships, communications and those types of things. Thank you.

To the issue of the standing offer agreement for program design, it’s to provide assistance with the design of new programs and re- design of current programs, so I’m still struggling to understand why this is not the job of the Program Review Office.

So, to the Minister, I’d like to know, in the same vein, what is the role of the Program Review Office in monitoring and evaluation of departments and/or their programs and services. I thought that’s why we established the Program Review Office in the first place. Thank you.

The Program Review Office was initially designed to address a need for a large corporation, an almost $2 billion corporation, to have some capacity for that internal overview program supervision in terms of design, implementation and audit type function to work with

other parts of government to make sure that we do deal with the issues of efficiency, effectiveness and economy. That’s what their role is intended to be and that’s what it is and it’s evolving as we look at it. It’s a very small operation and they need to have these types of agreements or standing offers so they can bring in expertise. The four people are not necessarily experts in every area, but they are able to manage, coordinate and collaborate. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Short supplementary, Ms. Bisaro.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I can be short and I thank the Minister for his answer. I would like to know from the Minister if he can estimate for me and this House what he estimates the cost in the 2015-16 budget year of these two standing offer agreements. Thank you.