Thank you, Mr. Chair. I’d just like to follow up on my colleague Ms. Bisaro’s comments. I’m obviously uncomfortable with this without the context of what the strategy is, something we’ve heard talked about for years but have never seen the pudding.

Did I hear that we’re going to spend something like $100,000 on communication materials? If I did, maybe I can get some explanation, in this day and age of busying your thumbs for a couple of minutes and being able to communicate across the globe, exactly what that $100,000 is going to.

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Minister Miltenberger.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This is a highly competitive area, especially economic-based immigration, so we have to look at what’s available in Canada, what may be available elsewhere, and we have to be able to make sure that the people who have the skills we need are where work’s possible, probable and available in the Northwest Territories, and all that requires some of the SEED money to do that. Thank you.

Again, not something I can support. We have extreme unemployment in parts of the Northwest Territories, and we’re travelling, there are international programs here and so on, and I’m all for immigration, but my understanding is there’s a lot of people trying to get here, and I don’t see how we’re spending over $300,000 on this

when we have already so many people who, with some training, could start to fill in these sorts of things. We’ve got the students graduating. The schools in Yellowknife are some of the best in the country, so we know we’re producing capable people. What are we not doing to bring those capable people back home?

Mr. Chairman, as we have discussed and we have been taken to task for, the population is flat or declining. Everybody in the Northwest Territories who has skills, qualifications, that is available to work, for the most part is working. We have a very high employment rate in that area.

We know that there are job requirements in the North that aren’t being filled. We are investing money, as well, to do a better job to make sure that northern students are given every opportunity to return home with employment with the government or anywhere else that employment may be available. We’re making changes to SFA to provide more incentive for that to happen. We’re going down south now with the Human Resource folks to job fairs and such, sometimes in conjunction with partnership with industry, where we can now hire while we’re down there and make interim job offers pending reference checks.

So, this is not just that there’s only one level to pull or there’s a silver bullet. We know that we need to look at all these different areas. We know that many of our own students when they come home, even if they get jobs here, especially if they’re in the fly-in/fly-out, may go south anyway.

So, we have all these challenges and we’ve been tasked and we set out a goal of 2,000 in five years, four now, and we need to leave no opportunity unexplored in order to bend that trend. Thank you.

I appreciate the Minister’s comments but, I mean, many of us take a completely different view. It’s that we’re not doing the right things to retain our people. We are training some of the best people in the world, very professional people coming out of the Northwest Territories and they’re leaving, or not returning, after education. Why is that?

I wasn’t sure if that was a rhetorical question, but we have people coming and going all the time. We have some of the best benefit packages, lifestyle issues that we think would attract folks, as do the private sector. But the reality is we have a fly-in/fly-out population that is fairly large. We have our birthrate that balances out, but on the exodus side we have some folks leaving, a few more leaving than are coming. So, those are questions, one that Mr. Bromley raised, that we are trying to deal with, with incentives to come here and to stay here and to bring folks from other places where there are jobs that are going unfilled because there’s not available

skilled labour in that area that want or can do that job. Thank you.

Again, Mr. Chair, we’re doing all these things and they’re not working. Is there not a lesson to be learned there? I mean, we hear over and over again that people want real supports, not big money going to big multinational companies and subsidies and $300 million highways, you know, that are going to cost us to try and maintain. People have real needs right now, and if we were delivering those properly, we’d be retaining people, we’d be giving them the quality of life that will make them want to be here and we will be attracting those skills. So, without that reasoning laid out in a strategy that supports expenditures like this and programs like this vetted through committee, I can’t support this sort of thing.

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. I’m taking that more as a final comment. Is there a question to that, or is that the end of your questions, Mr. Bromley?

No question.

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. As convention presents itself, I will let Minister Miltenberger have the final comment here. Minister Miltenberger.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. We have a challenge ahead of us and it does require some investment. We can’t just turn our back on trying to address the issue. I know the Member’s position is that we can somehow find all the talent we need in the North and if we keep it here it will all be well and good, but first we need an economy.

We have diamond mines that add $1.6 billion to our GDP every year. They have a significant fly-in/fly-out population. We are working with the mines. In fact, there’s a meeting this week to talk about this initiative, as well, from the private sector’s perspective and the things they’re doing to try to keep and encourage their workforce to stay in the North, and it’s a long-term commitment.

You can’t just, after 18 months, throw up your hands and say it’s not working and let’s not do it anymore and then wonder why our population keeps dropping. We have to make decisions, make choices, and we have to make investments, and that’s what this is.

Thank you, Minister Miltenberger. Committee, we’re on page 5, Education, Culture and Employment, operations expenditures, education and culture, not previously authorized, negative $84,000; income security, not previously authorized, $1.332 million; labour development and standards, not previously authorized, $226,000. Total department, not previously authorized, $1.474 million. Does committee agree?

Thank you, committee. Page 6, Environment and Natural Resources, operations expenditures, conservation, assessment and monitoring, not previously authorized, $1,000; corporate management, not previously authorized, $9,000; environment, not previously authorized, $206,000; forest management, not previously authorized, $15,000; water resources, not previously authorized, $519,000; wildlife, not previously authorized, $59,000. Total department, not previously authorized, $809,000. Does committee agree?

Thank you, committee. Turn to page 7, Executive, operations expenditures, directorate, not previously authorized, $575,000. Ms. Bisaro.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have some concerns with the two items of funding on this page. The first one is under the directorate and it has to do with funding for costs associated with the communications functional review. Five hundred sixteen thousand dollars is itemized under directorate and then $335,000 under Ministers’ offices. I know we’ve been back and forth with the government a bit on this between Members and Cabinet. We have had some information about what this expenditure is for. I’d like to, first of all, I guess, ask the Minister, since this is an additional cost and I don’t believe it’s being offset by any funding that we already have like federal funding or devolution money or whatever, but I’d like to know what this $516,000 under the directorate is going to be used for.

Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Minister Miltenberger.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. This funding is coming from transitional funding tied to devolution, and there are two things at play here. One is we have taken over about $63 million worth of new programs and services that we’ve integrated into the government with many new responsibilities, mandates and authorities. We’ve integrated them into the Government of the Northwest Territories. As well, we have a communication infrastructure that’s 20 years old and in need of enhancement prior to devolution, even more so now after devolution. We’ve taken on, for example, significant regulatory functions. We need to be able to manage those and other communication responsibilities. This money is going to go towards identifying what needs to be done and then putting in some funding to in fact address the communications issue, an issue I would add that, once again, we’ve been taken to task for time after time by Members of the Legislative Assembly, in terms of things that should

be done better, that need to be done better, and we’re attempting to do that in a reasoned way.

I would ask, as well, if the Premier wanted to add anything further to that particular issue.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Certainly, we feel that it’s important for us to fulfill our new responsibilities by having better communications, functions and structures, and in order to meet these requirements we’re requesting funding that has been through the devolution transitional funding which will provide for three additional positions, three in the corporate communications and two in the Cabinet communications. This is an opportunity to provide communications that would respect our unique northern cultures and also fulfill a lot of the principles that we’ve talked about, to ensure the public is informed on a timely, accurate and consistent manner, that it’s managed in an orderly and planned function, that the public is informed about government policies and activities and that the concerns and the views of the public are taken into account and ensure that the government is visible and accessible and that adequate information is provided.

Thank you, Premier McLeod. Ms. Bisaro.

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thanks to both Ministers. I hear that this money is going to be used for five new positions, and I can appreciate two things. I can appreciate that we’ve taken on greater responsibilities, and I can also appreciate that our communications have been seen to be lacking. I am certainly one of those who has suggested that we could do things a heck of a lot better. But I’m wondering where the decision that we needed five PYs has come from. Minister Miltenberger indicated that this money is going to be used to look at things and determine where to go. The Premier indicates that there are five PYs, so how did we come to this decision that we needed five PYs?