Thank you, Mr. Chairman. There was a considerable review done on this, which is one of the reasons it took so long. As Mr. Bromley pointed out, the initial report, if it was accepted at full face value, would be coming forward with dozens and dozens of new jobs, which we knew in our day and age of ongoing fiscal restraint was not sustainable, supportable or acceptable, so we’ve worked at how we could address this and do some of the improvements. We’ve taken over, once again, $65 million worth of new programs, hundreds of staff, in addition to the fact that it has been clearly pointed out to us that

our current system is not up to the task for the government pre-devolution, and post-devolution we know we have to up our game, and it covers all aspects of communication in a government that now has about 5,600 employees, 14 departments, just about a $2 billion budget that covers a whole range of services across the whole spectrum from the health and social service side to building roads and everything in between. We have looked at this and what we’ve come forward with is what we think is the barest minimum we need to keep managing on a go-forward basis and look at some of the improvements that are expected, both by this Assembly and the public.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Let me just restate, the conditions of this A-base transfer is to provide the functions that we negotiated with the federal government, AANDC, and we’re committed to that. That money is built into our A-base to provide those functions that we’ve taken over that were formerly delivered by the federal government, and we don’t have the latitude to arbitrarily say now that we’re going to start taking that money and doing other things that what we negotiated and signed an agreement on.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The money that we’ve got into our A-base, $65.3 million, is for specific functions tied to land, water and resource development. We don’t have the latitude to be able to say we’ve decided we’re going to spend half of it now on social programs, for example. We have obligations tied to devolution and agreements we signed to honour that commitment and fund those critical functions tied to land, water and issues related to managing that and the resource development.

In regard to the question about the layout, I’ll defer to the Premier, Mr. Chair, with your concurrence.

This report was done in November when the budgets were pretty well set. There was, as well, significant internal review, assessment, debate, discussion

going back and forth about what was exactly the best way to proceed. When we finally reached that consensus, we had missed that window. So we identified, as have Members and the public, significant shortcomings in our communications system. So, if this money is not voted on and it doesn’t get approved, it would be about another year to potentially get the resources to work to do the improvements that are needed today. Thank you.

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.

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.

The work was still being concluded. The report has been written, the assessments made. We had to take it back through the due process and we weren’t able to get it done in time. That would have been our initial preference, but it was not possible, hence this request through the supplementary appropriation process. Thank you.

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. 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.