Thank you, Mr. Chair. Looking at the Mains on page 2-63, I notice that in this section, Management and Recruitment Services, the only reductions that seem to have occurred are a small percentage in travel and a small percentage in materials and supplies, as well as the elimination of one vacant position.

Yesterday I talked about efficiencies and how large organizations with less staff are able to manage their human resources services — organizations with far more staff than the GNWT has. I was wondering if you could help me understand or go through the process you went through to identify reductions in this area through identifying efficiencies and increasing the effectiveness of this division. What is in the books? Obviously, there

were no reductions in this area. I am mostly curious.

Yesterday in some of your comments you mentioned the Hackett Report. My timing might be a little wrong on this — it might have been the previous fiscal year, not last fiscal year — but I believe that report cost about $400,000-plus, and I believe that you funded that from within. I’m curious. If you were in fact able to find that money from within, it may suggest that there might be some room or some additional saving possibilities within the department itself. I was wondering if you could talk a bit about where those dollars came from and whether or not that provides room for some additional savings within the Department of Human Resources.

Mr. Speaker, I was going to talk about something different today, but after hearing the lead Minister responsible for the Refocusing Government Strategic Initiative Committee, I thought I would talk about his statement instead. I’m happy to see the government is moving forward with refocusing government. I’m happy to hear that the government is planning on conducting program reviews. I’m happy to hear that the government is planning to change the GNWT’s approach to infrastructure. I’m also happy they’re going to be improving human resource management, improving service delivery and managing the cost of the government.

Unfortunately, I think these things should have been done before this budget came forward. These are the types of things we were hoping to hear and hoping to see prior to the budget coming forward. When the Premier came and talked to us about the need to change the way we do business, change the way the government operates, we were hoping to see that.

What we see with the budget that has come forward is cuts, cuts, cuts, and we don’t see these types of things. It would have been better for all of us — it would have been better for the people of the Northwest Territories — if we had held off on many of the budget cuts we’re proposing now and gone through this process the Minister was talking about today rather than jumping into cuts immediately. I would love to see this government take back this budget and give us a status quo budget for the next couple of months, another interim budget so they could have the opportunity and the time they require to actually follow these processes and come forward with a decent, responsible budget that will allow the Northwest Territories to prosper.

Ultimately, though, I’m quite happy to hear what the Minister had to say. I think it’s just a little too late. I think this needed to happen before the budget came forward. I’ll stop repeating myself. I’ll now sit down.

I’m actually slightly changing tacks here if that’s all right. I’m looking at your budget. For your compensation and benefits in this section it’s about $2.3 million. There’s been no position change in this area at all, yet when I look at vacant positions under HR Strategy and Policy, I see a business systems analyst that has been vacant for seven months, the manager of human resource information systems which has been vacant for two years and a policy officer which has been vacant for a year. In light of the reductions and finding ways to avoid laying off staff, were any of these three positions considered for layoff or elimination purposes in an effort to decrease the overall budget?

Not the TSC upgrades; I apologize. The HR system upgrade. Are there ongoing costs related to that upgrade, and is that included as part of the $716,000?

The TSC upgrade is included in this budget line — the contract services?

Mr. Chair, this question is going to sound an awfully lot like the last question. In the '07–08 Mains you had a total budget of $716,000

under Contract Services and $458,000 under Other. Under Contract Services your Revised Mains are $116,000 lower, yet this year you've come back to the full amount of $716,000. Under Other you're at $458,000. You dip down to $207,000 by way of the Revised Mains, and now you're back up to $368,000. Granted, we don't have previous years, so we don't see much of a trend here, but why did these numbers dip in the Revised Mains and why are we putting them back up? Is there an opportunity for some cost savings here by way of keeping the contract services and the others lower than you are currently projecting?

So the increase is mostly around the TSC chargeback area. It wasn’t growth –– was it –– that increased this area back up to $302,000? You found it from within.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. You may have answered it, but I just may not have understood or heard it properly. In the 2006–2007 actuals under Fees and Payments you had $545,000. In the Main Estimates for ’07–08 you had $302,000, but your Revised Mains were quite a bit lower than that. They were $117,000. This year you’re coming back with exactly the same amount as the previous year’s Mains under Fees and Payments. Can you tell me the history there? Because I see that it gets high, then goes down, then drops to the Revised Mains, and now you’re putting it back up to where it was next year. Was there a reason that it dipped that year, or is this an area that maybe we can look at for reductions? What were the fees and payments for, and why did they dip last year?