Thank you, Mr. Chair. I want to make a few comments about the work that committee and Minister and staff did on this bill. As the Minister said in his remarks, it has been a long-term initiative. The amendments to this act were long overdue. This is a totally rewritten act and it is going to be quite beneficial.
The actual work to get a new act has been ongoing since 2005. I think that’s when the first LP was proposed. It has gone back and forth over several Assemblies. I think we were successful in this Assembly, and with this particular piece of legislation, because there was a great deal of collaboration – and Mr. Dolynny referred to that already – but there was a great deal of collaboration between committee and Minister, between Finance staff and Ledge staff, and between the lawyers on the Finance side and the Law Clerk on the Legislative Assembly side. I think
that enabled us to make a number of amendments that have improved the bill.
There was a need for the committee… We did a lot of work initially on our own with our own staff and then felt that that there were areas where we weren’t all that certain of the ramifications of some of the suggested changes, so we engaged the services of a consultant. I think that was money well spent in that we got a number of recommendations from the consultant’s report which certainly benefited the bill and made it a better bill in the end.
I just want to mention a couple of things that I note as being important in the bill and some changes that will take place as this new bill goes into effect. It is a goal of this particular bill for the government to exert greater control over public agencies. Not so much to tell them what to do but to make sure that they are accountable and that they are spending public money wisely. There was quite a bit of concern initially on the part of committee because we didn’t really understand what the intent was. I think, after several conversations and the understanding of the intent, I certainly am comfortable, as a committee member, that public agencies are going to have to ensure that they’re using the money correctly and wisely and that they are accountable and transparent, but they’re not going to be hampered in the way that they go about their business for their organization.
I had a large concern with some of the tax revenues for education boards. There are only two or three that have their own tax revenues, and now I’m comfortable that with legislation, both the FAA and the Education Act, that the education boards that do produce their own revenue through taxation will be able to keep control of those funds.
There are a number of provisions of the Financial Administration Manual that have been moved from policy into legislation, and those are good moves. I think it’s going to improve accountability and transparency all around.
There are two large pieces of policy which I want to highlight. They were necessary, and they’re both quite prominent in this new bill, Bill 37. One is a Planning and Accountability Framework, which the Minister must produce, and a Fiscal Responsibility Policy, which the Minister must produce, and both of which through discussion and amendments there will be an opportunity for the Legislative Assembly and standing committees of the Assembly to provide input into those two policies whenever changes are contemplated and want to be brought forward.
Lastly, I am pleased that this act has reached this stage. It’s going to bring the act in line with many of our current practices and procedures. I think we’ve been doing things from a financial perspective that we know are right but they haven’t necessarily been recorded in legislation, and they will be as we go
forward now. We will have an updated act and we will have a modernized act, and I think in a couple of areas we are going to be at the leading edge, if not leading the country, in a few areas. Kudos to the Minister and staff for getting this done.