Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We made the reductions in training and development. We feel that we followed the processes here. We’ve made the reductions in spite of the fact that we had increases of over $1 million that were forced growth increases. That was the Collective Agreement and the fact that we needed to have individuals working on the next collective bargaining process, we still managed to hold the growth to $688,000 by reducing in other areas such as training and development. So that’s what we’ve done. We’ve reduced by that amount.

So I’m not sure that… Well, I think I am sure that the Member is asking us to decrease by the other $688,000 in order to bring the increase to zero. I guess that’s something that we would take some advice from the committee on.

Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Next on my list I have Ms. Bisaro.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I’m going to follow up on where Mr. Dolynny left off for a bit. I may have mentioned in my general comments about passive restraint and that I don’t think it’s working. On top of the fact that there’s an increase to this budget, and I see in this department or this section alone under directorate it’s about $100,000. But there was a transfer from HR to Finance of a number of employees. So in spite of the fact that we had a section transfer out of this department, the department still went up overall some $680,000 and in this particular section $100,000.

I really have to say, and I think it applies to every department in this government, that passive restraint really isn’t working. In this particular case, I don’t see where passive restraint had any effect at all. I’ll leave that as a comment. If the Minister wants to try and explain it to me, that would be great, but I haven’t heard an explanation yet.

My question has to do with safe disclosure. We have set in place a Safe Disclosure MOU with the union and my understanding is that there hasn’t been great uptake on that provision, which is unfortunate. I would encourage the employees to take advantage of it; that’s why it’s there. I believe we were advised that there was going to be some work done on legislation.

I’d like to know from the Minister where legislation is in the grand scheme of things and what work has been done. When can we expect to see a legislative proposal and/or the legislation itself? Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Mr. Beaulieu.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. On the safe disclosure, I will have Ms. Beard talk a bit on that and respond on the budget. I really don’t understand exactly what it is that the Member is saying.

We’ve had forced growth, which means we are forced to grow in the area of collective bargaining and Collective Agreement increases and collective bargaining negotiations and also in the PeopleSoft maintenance, so those are three areas that we grew in. We’ve legally had to provide French language communications and services. We grew in that. There was an increase in devolution and then we had transferred to Finance a certain amount.

When we are sitting here with a budget in front of us that is growing much less than the Collective Agreement and the other initiatives that we present here, then I don’t understand how that fact that people were moved… A bunch of people are moving. This was accounted for. The 71 positions that went to Finance were accounted for. We didn’t keep the same money that we did when we had the 71 people working for us. When they went to Finance, the money that associated with those positions was also transferred and then the mains are adjusted, too, so that when we go back to the actuals in 2013-14 they are adjusted with those positions moving over. I don’t know how those positions moving to Finance have any impact on the budget that we are speaking of here today.

I will have Ms. Beard talk a bit more on safe disclosure. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Ms. Beard.

Thank you, Ms. Beard. Ms. Bisaro.

Thanks, Mr. Chair, and thanks to Ms. Beard for that info. I guess I would be interested in knowing when this review of the Public Service Act might be done, when we the Assembly could expect to see some kind of concrete either

Public Service Act LP and/or stand-alone Safe Disclosure Act LP.

To the Minister’s comments, I’m a little confused. The Minister talked about adjusting mains. I have to say, when I look at this document in front of me, I see that the budget for HR – and this is just in the directorate – in 2013 was $3.78 million, in 2014-15 it was $4.4 million and in 2015-16 it’s $4.5 million. But in that time, somewhere in there we moved 71 people from HR to Finance, so albeit with forced growth and everything else, I’m not understanding how this budget has gone up. If the Minister is telling me that the numbers have been adjusted, then this is more evidence of smoke and mirrors that I constantly talk about.

What adjustment is he talking about in terms of the mains? Where is the cost for the 71 employees who went to Finance? Has it not been removed from the dollar value for the ‘15-16 main estimates? Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Minister Beaulieu.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. That money has been removed, but it didn’t impact directorate. This was a whole section on pay and benefits that was in Human Resources that moved to Finance, and all the people that were in the management and the whole group from there moved over but it didn’t impact on the directorate specifically.

Thanks to the Minister. I will say okay, fine, but I look at page 227 when we are looking at the whole department and again the whole department has gone up.

So if we have gone from ‘13-14, $19.5 million to $23.7 million in ‘14-15 and $24.3 million in ‘15-16 and presumably the 71 positions have been accounted for in this budget on page 227, the loss of them, and yet the budget still goes up. This is where I am having difficulty and I suspect my colleague is as well. Thank you.

Had we left the 71 positions in the budget, then you would have seen a huge decrease, so what we did so that we’re able to compare apples to apples, was to remove completely retroactively to those positions left. It has no impact at all. Maybe what I am going to try to do is try to get Ms. Beard to add some of the details on how that had occurred. It is like we are comparing the… I think the department has 119 people, so we’re comparing that all the way along, not the 190 people that were in the department previously. It is as if those 71 people had never existed in the system. I think it is 78 people actually. Sorry, I don’t have that number here, but it is like they never existed as far as this main estimate goes.

If the chairman is okay, I will have the director do more response.

Thank you, Minister Beaulieu. Ms. Beard.

Thank you Director Beard. Ms. Bisaro.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank for the explanations. Just a comment, I am pretty much floored by the fact that the numbers that we have in front of us for this department were not comparing apples to apples basically. These numbers have been fudged, so to speak, to remove the 71

positions from the previous year’s estimates so that the numbers can look good. I’m having difficulty following this, so I can only imagine what somebody in the public is going to be doing in looking at this. They are going to think everything is just grand.

There’s no reference in here to the fact that the numbers have been adjusted for the 71 positions. There should be a comment, for heaven sakes, somewhere in the budget which says that there should be a corresponding comment in the Finance section, and yet this basically looks like everything is the same from one year to the next and we absolutely know it’s not. The Minister mentioned I forget however many hundreds of millions of dollars that it is off, so just a comment. I really would recommend that we don’t do this again. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Minister Beaulieu.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Those position transfers where reflected in the ‘14-15 budget year. That was the year that those occurred. The removal of those positions from this process is proper accounting procedures.

No further comment, Ms. Bisaro? Committee, we are on page 231, Human Resources, directorate, operations expenditures, $4.504 million.

Agreed. Page 232, directorate, active positions, information item. Questions?

Agreed. Page 234, Human Resources, labour relations, information item. Questions?