Thank you, Mr. Chairman. There was a GNWT communications functional review that captured this and did their review and took a look at what was needed to enhance our capacity. We’ve attempted to be very reasonable that what was in an ideal communications systems would require a much greater investment, but once again, I’d ask if the Premier wants to add anything further to that.

Thank you, Minister Miltenberger. We’ll go to Premier McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. We did a communications review that looked at all of our responsibilities. They also interviewed deputy ministers and senior management and offered to interview MLAs. We also recognize the fact that, as we stated, we have new authorities, new legislation and program responsibilities, and also the communications environment is changing very rapidly with the advent of social media, 24/7 news cycles, and we also focused on communications professions standards such as communications policy, currency and congruence, strategic management of the communications function, professional functional excellence. We did look at other jurisdictions, the other territories which have smaller public service sizes and less government expenditures and smaller populations, where the Yukon government, for example, has 59 communications staff, the Government of Nunavut has 32, and the Northwest Territories has the largest public service size, the largest government expenditures, the largest population and we currently have 27 communications staff. So we took all of those into consideration. Functions review made some recommendations and we determined, through the results of the review, that three positions in the public communications sector and two in Cabinet communications will fulfill the responsibilities in the communications area that we feel are required. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Premier McLeod. Ms. Bisaro.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thanks again to the Minister. I have a few more questions here. First of all, this is being funded through transition funding, but presumably once it has been funded through our devolution transition funding, it’s then going to be added to the base. So, this is an increase to our budget, I’m presuming.

The Premier mentioned that through this report and through comparing Yukon, Nunavut and NWT, the determination was to add five PYs. Does that mean that this is the final decision that we’re adding five PYs to our communications and our staffing complement is going to be 32 now, or is there going to be further additions to our communications staffing later on down the line? Thank you.

For that we’ll go directly to Premier McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Through the review, we feel that would be sufficient to fulfill all of the responsibilities. As a government, we constantly review our programs and services. So, at this time, we expect this will fulfill all of those responsibilities. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Premier McLeod. Minister Miltenberger.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just with regard to the nature of the funding, this is coming out of implementation funding to the A-base, so it will be ongoing. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Ms. Bisaro.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have 18 seconds, so will fit another question in here. I appreciate the clarification on the funding, but we have just recently approved an operations budget in early March. We are now being asked to spend an additional $800,000.

Why was this expense not put into the operations budget which we approved just a few months ago? Why does it have to come forward as a supp? Thank you.

Thank you, Minister Miltenberger. Next on my list I have Mr. Bouchard.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I think Ms. Bisaro covered a lot of the questions I had, but I will ask some of the questions a bit differently. I have concern with the fact that we’re equating these positions and this funding through our devolution fund reserves that we have, but after the devolution money has been spent, this becomes part of the cost of the GNWT. Obviously, on top of the positions we’ve added to devolution, we’re adding five more positions into Yellowknife. Is there any way we can make these term positions and we look at the assessment and the effectiveness after the devolution money has dried up after spending all this money on these positions?

I’m having a difficulty with the fact that we’re creating more bureaucracy and I’m not sure what we’re going to communicate more to the public. Often we get criticized with government about our communications, so I’m not exactly sure what these five positions are going to do with the communications of government. Could the Minister answer some of that information?

Thank you, Mr. Bouchard. Minister Miltenberger.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. With devolution there were two funds. There was one-time transition money to help us over the course of the year to get up and running and then there was implementation funding where we negotiated a global figure, $65.3 million a year

tied to our formula that will increase as our formula increases and goes into our A-base. It’s out of that $65.3 million that these positions are being funded from. That money will go into the A-base. It’s not coming out of existing government expenditures, nor will it. That funding is covered there. Then the issue is, just to quickly restate, we have a system that hasn’t been looked at in over 20 years, a communications system that has been the target of a lot of concern and unhappiness.

We’ve taken on a lot of responsibilities. We have funding available into our A-base where there is some funding available to help us pick up our game when it comes to a communications system. First we did a review that laid out the things we need to do, areas that need to be addressed. There are four areas: We are under-resourced on a comparative basis, we need to better define the roles and purposes, which we are doing, we need to work on consistent messaging, and we have to make sure that what we’re providing is what is needed by the citizens. All this requires and points to the fact that we’re not as well organized as we should be and we are significantly under-resourced. We think this will address that issue. Thank you.

I’m trying to get clarification. I think on Ms. Bisaro’s question, the Minister indicated it was going to be added to our ongoing costs and you just indicated to me that it wouldn’t be added to our ongoing cost, but be part of ongoing devolution money. Can I get more detail? How are these positions going to be funded after devolution money has been expended completely?

Thank you, Mr. Bouchard. For that response, we’ll go to Mr. Aumond.

Thank you, Mr. Aumond. Mr. Bouchard.

So I think I’m getting the picture here. This is funding from the federal government

on an ongoing basis. Why would we continue to have these positions if part of these positions are just to assess our communications system now? The Minister indicated we need to assess our communications system and the way we communicate. In my perspective, that would be reviewing something that would only be a short period of time, something we would need as a term, not a full-time position where after the assessment is done, we don’t need that position anymore. Why wouldn’t we do that as a term position or why wouldn’t we do it as a contract to have the assessment done?

Thank you, Mr. Bouchard. Minister Miltenberger.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I apologize if I wasn’t clear enough. This was a two-step process. We did the functional review of our communications system which gave us the information that pointed to areas of concern, including the under-resourcing and being better organized to take on these new responsibilities. Based on that work, which is already done, we’ve come forward with this request to put some resources into the communication systems to make sure we can address those issues, improve the communication systems and incorporate all the work that needs to be done with the new authorities.

So, I apologize to the Member if I wasn’t clear enough, but both those things were done. Thank you.

Then I guess I’ve got a question about this communication report that was done. We’ve been given the information, as far as this report was done, in November. So, it should have gone through our regular budgeting process.

Why cannot we, as a government, get a report in November and have it ready for our March implementation of funding in the March review? Now we’re back here on June 1st looking at

something that we don’t really have full direction on, we haven’t had full discretion about it, we haven’t had a business planning process to go through. I guess, why does it take so long to get that process going forward?

You know, then I guess the other question that I have while I have time here is: What happens if this wasn’t approved? These positions would have to be reviewed in the fall, into our budget process, put into a business planning process and then approved through this Assembly that way. If we delayed this for a year, what would it do to our communications system?