Daniel MacIsaac
Northern News Services

NNSL (Mar 26/99) - Among the "housekeeping" bills that the 13th legislative assembly must deal with before territorial division April 1 is the matter of a $19-million pension-plan.

Sponsored by Yellowknife Frame Lake MLA Charles Dent, Bill 16 passed a first notice of motion Tuesday.

Dent explained after the session that the pension in question is being wound up and effects seven active MLAs and 24 former MLAs. He said the pension was a fully funded, non-contributing fund, and that the 31 individuals will have the option of taking lump-sum payments or a series of short-term payouts.

The motion was passed in the house on a vote of 12 members for the bill, four against and two abstaining. Those against included Yellowknife Centre MLA Jake Ootes, who said Wednesday he felt more time was required to examine all relevant information.

Yellowknife South MLA Seamus Henry said he opposed dealing with the pension now mainly because of the timing.

"People understand this is a pension the MLAs are entitled to," he said, "But people generally dislike politicians, and they're going to question why this is happening now when there's very little time to be dealing with all of the legislation we have to go through before division."Dent said that depending on how the pensions are calculated, closing the fund now may result in a $9-million surplus coming back to the government.

Contracts issue raised

Several members of the legislative assembly have been raising the issue of contracts this week.

The way government contracts are awarded -- particularly negotiated and request-for-proposals -- has come under fire by MLAs Jake Ootes and Jane Groenewegen.

Ootes said Monday that he has received complaints from constituents arguing the need for a more open process for awarding contracts to private firms. He said the biggest criticism of the current system involves the inability of contract applicants to receive answers as to why their bids failed. But Ootes added he was happy that Premier Jim Antoine had already responded to his letter outlining his concerns.

"This past week I was provided a letter from the premier ... and he advised that the government has assembled a committee to review the current practices on negotiated contracts," Ootes said, urging the committee to seek feedback from affected individuals and expand its mandate to cover requests-for-proposal.

Housekeeping bills heard

Aside from dealing with the controversial issue of electoral boundaries, the legislature must also deal with a number of "housekeeping" matters before month's end.

The housekeeping bills are relatively straight-forward but must be in place before the April 1 launch of Nunavut. The third reading of bills Tuesday included Bill 1 on the Division Measures Act, 1999, Bill 5 on the Nunavut Power Utilities Statutes Amendment Act and Bill 8, the Interim Appropriation Act, 1999-00.

The latter bill deals with creating an interim, three-month budget, so that the government can continue to function until the new, all-Western assembly meets in April and passes a budget for the entire fiscal year.