So, what we've heard today from the assistant deputy minister is that $2.5 million, not $1.5 million, was deposited in our public accounts in May of 2014. Now we're looking for an appropriation to spend $1.5 million. Where is the remaining of this money and where was it spent? Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I'd like to welcome the department here again today for the appropriations. Maybe if we can just start this off with a simple lead-in question here, if we can get some level of explanation what this $1.5 million means with respect to tenant improvements. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I do rise in support of this motion and I would like to thank the mover, Mr. Bromley, and Mr. Nadli for bringing it forward today.

As I'm sitting here listening to my colleagues speak toward this motion, I am saddened for a number of reasons; we failed, plain and simple. I think Mr. Moses said it clearly, we're so bogged down with all the things that are our day-to-day lives, we forget certain things and this is one of the areas that I think that even from a Member of this House, from a Member of the Social Programs committee, we failed, and I apologize to those with disabilities out there. We're not perfect and, unfortunately, this is late in the game that we're bringing this forward. But we have a social contract with everyone in the Northwest Territories and we have a social contract especially with those with disabilities and hopefully this motion today makes some amends towards that action.

As you've heard today, Mr. Speaker, there continue to be gaps and there are too many to mention and a lot have been mentioned here today as well. It's amazing that in this day and age, 2015, we're talking about some of those basic areas that we take for granted. You know what? We came together as a Caucus four years ago and we had a shared vision. I remember doing that vividly and we talked about a vision of strong individuals, families and communities and that includes those with disabilities. I think we forgot about that along the way.

As you heard in the motion, 15 percent of our population suffers disabilities, roughly around 6,000 people. That's almost the size of our public workforce. So that's like us ignoring everyone who works for the government and that's a large number of people.

I'm really concerned that we sometimes take accessibility for granted and that's not right. Those who have troubles in that area have a right to dignity and I think we haven't offered them that right here today and I'm hoping this motion, I guess, speaks a little bit to making some amends to where I think we've failed during the life of this 17^th Assembly because they don't need to live with that stigma, and for that we did fail and I will definitely be supporting this motion and I'm looking for all my colleagues to support the mover and seconder. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As I said earlier, Yellowknife has 40 percent of these establishments, not way more that we heard from the Minister.

Finally, it shows in the statement of operations that in 2014-2015 there were three compliance hearings in the NWT for a total compliance penalty collection of $2,800 from NWT businesses. For this measly $2,800, the Liquor Commission spent $25,000 in travel and amassed $34,000 in honouraria.

Again, can the Minister inform the House, does he still feel we're getting good value for money? Thank you.

The report also indicates that enforcement offers what is called server training and conducts these courses free of charge to all NWT licence holders. This is voluntary, but the Liquor Board can order a business to attend at their discretion. Interestingly, for the past two years of this report, three communities, Fort Simpson, Inuvik and Norman Wells, had zero server training participants, yet once again it appears that in this 2014-15 report, 67 percent of the participants targeted and voluntarily forced to attend were from Yellowknife.

So once again, can the Minister indicate why the perceived unbalance toward Yellowknife businesses? Thank you.

Again, the numbers don't lie, and to take this one step further, the report also shows from 2013-14 to the 2014-15 year a decrease in inspections of licenced premises in every community in the Northwest Territories except the Yellowknife community. In fact, inspections are up in our community by 3 percent.

So, can the Minister offer an explanation to this trend? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. With the multiple number of reports being tabled in the past four session days, and no doubt right up to the bell later this week, I think Cabinet is hoping that Members will be a little too busy to follow up on all the plethora of paperwork before us. But there is one tabled document, 314-17(5), that was tabled on September 30, 2015, to which I'd like to ask the Minister responsible some questions.

The Minister of Finance tabled the NWT Liquor Licensing Board and Liquor Enforcement Board's 61^st Annual Report, 2014-2015, and within this report it indicates the number of class A to class B liquor licence holders in the NWT. Interestingly, Yellowknife holds 40 percent of these class establishments in the territory. It is plagued with 66 percent of all inspections in the NWT.

Can the Minister indicate why Yellowknife businesses are so unevenly targeted with his Liquor Enforcement Program? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, through you and to you, I'd like to introduce one of our recipients, we've heard earlier today, for the Ukrainian award, and that is a member of Range Lake, Trisha Graham. Thank you for joining us today.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In keeping with my continuing evaluation of the current administration, today I wish to talk about our growth in the GNWT workforce.

It is a known fact that managing the size of government is an important component of fiscal performance. Compensation and benefits for government's departments, boards and agencies account for approximately 40 percent of the GNWT's spending on operations. With the 2015-2016 average costs of compensation and benefits for a government employee at more than $100,000 per year, we should give this some attention today.

The GNWT workforce, which includes boards and agencies, has grown 30.7 percent from 2000 to 2015 to a total of 5,438 employees projected for the 2015-16 year. But when you isolate just boards and agencies, they have grown somewhat more than GNWT departments at the 33.1 percent respectively, although this rate of growth is significantly lower than the growth of operation spending, as I said earlier, at 115 percent, and our revenue at 149 percent during that same period.

Mr. Speaker, looking at this all from another angle, we need only to review GNWT employees as a percentage of the NWT population as a whole. If you look back to the 16^th Legislative Assembly, we witnessed a decrease in this relationship, and it's not until the start of the 17^th Legislative Assembly where we see a steady and modest trend upwards in our workforce growth.

We all know this administration was saddled with devolution responsibilities, so we need to evaluate how well all this managed in comparison to the trends in workforce growth. Understandably, we saw a substantial growth in the number of GNWT employees with devolution implementation. This is a given. But this contributed to the GNWT's workforce to rise above 12 percent of the total NWT population for the first time in our post-divisional history.

However, as I indicated earlier, even before devolution this percentage of workforce growth was rising moderately and trending at a much higher percentage than the previous three Assemblies. It is therefore my conclusion that although we saw reasonable stewardship of the devolution responsibilities as a percentage of workforce growth management, it is with the overall trend and management that I have a concern with. It is under this evaluation framework that I recognize the management of growth of the GNWT workforce for this McLeod government to be at a B minus grade. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.