Thank you, Mr. Chair. Over the past couple of weeks, a number of people have asked my opinion on this new Assembly, and the word that always comes to my mind is "refreshing." There is a sense of renewal in the air and a sense that we have the opportunity to finally start making the kind of changes that the voters in the last two elections have clearly demanded.
In order to do that, we must first begin to address some fundamental issues that are at the heart of our ability to govern and our legitimacy as a government, including accountability; the functioning of consensus government; a relationship with the public service, the public, and other governments; and the relationship between the capital and the rest of the territory. These issues are the foundation of our decision-making process and, if we wish to make progress in the territory and advance a bold, long-term vision, then we need to start with a strong foundation. These issues, all of which lie squarely within the purview of the office of the Premier, are what I will be discussing today.
There are also a number of very important issues that I won't be discussing; economic diversification, healthcare, education, infrastructure, and so on. While I have definite opinions about what we need to do in regard to those areas, the priorities and goals of the next government will be determined by the Assembly as a whole when the elected 19 Members meet next week. I am not going to presume what those will be. What I am going to talk about today are the changes that I think need to come out of the Office of the Premier in order for this Assembly to achieve those goals.
For those watching who may not be familiar with our system of government, the role and powers of the Premier in our consensus style of government differ from those in a party-based system. In a party system, the party's platform is developed independently from the legislature and, once elected, the Premier is given broad powers to implement that platform, including the power to appoint and remove Cabinet Ministers.
In our system, the Assembly as a whole sets the priorities and has the sole discretion to appoint and remove Ministers. This means that our Premier has less coercive power than provincial Premiers and must therefore focus more on ensuring that there are strong working relationships between all Members of the Assembly in order to get things done. In fact, relationships are central to the role of Premier; relationships with Ministers, Regular Members, Indigenous governments, the federal government, communities, industry, and the public. These are all interrelated and, if the Premier cannot maintain positive relationships with all of these entities, the effects are felt across our entire society.
I have become quite familiar with these effects over the last four years; the union negotiations, the red alert, the pettiness seen in this Assembly, the discontent of Indigenous governments that we heard yesterday in our meetings, and so on. This is what spurred me to put my name forward for Premier.
I don't want to disparage our current Premier. I believe that he has always acted with the best intentions of the territory in mind and, if I had an issue, I knew that I could always walk to his office or pick up the phone and he would be willing to talk. However, I think that the territory will benefit from a new approach. People have lost faith in our system. They have lost faith in our ability to deliver results, and many people believe that the system is no longer fair. I can tell you that that is how I felt, knowing that my vote never once mattered in the last Assembly. Everything was a done deal before it ever hit the floor.
I don't always need to get my way. In life, you win some and you lose some. That's fine. I can accept that, if the system is fair. What I won't accept is a situation in which a vote that is meant to represent the will of the people of Hay River is meaningless. That is unacceptable. We can do better. We need to restore people's faith in our system by ensuring that everyone's vote counts and everyone's opinion is considered.
There are lessons to be learned from the last Assembly and, regardless of who the next Premier is, they need to be addressed if we wish to serve the people of the Northwest Territories to the best of our collective abilities. The first issue that we need to address is accountability. This isn't just my opinion as a political insider. I hear this from members of the public all the time. We can start with the relationship between Cabinet and Regular Members.
As I stated, in our system of government, only the Assembly can appoint and remove Ministers. In other jurisdictions where the Premier has this authority, it is clear that the Premier is ultimately responsible for the actions of Ministers. However, in our system, the distribution of this authority could end up in a diffusion of responsibility, meaning that, when everyone is responsible for keeping Ministers accountable, no one is responsible.
I know that, at times, I am hard on the last Assembly, and perhaps I give the impression that it was all bad, but it wasn't. There were definitely some successes. There were some collaborative efforts that yielded excellent results. Unfortunately, if Ministers showed no willingness to collaborate or displayed ignorance or arrogance or incompetence, there were no consequences or remedies available to us, and we all knew it. That is what needs to change. The power to remove Ministers may lie solely with the Assembly, but that doesn't mean that the Premier may wash his or her hands of that responsibility. The buck has to stop somewhere.
If the leadership of this Assembly is lacking, it is up to the Premier to fill that void. I don't mean that the Premier should be able to remove Ministers; I mean that the Premier should work to ensure that we never reach a point where we have to consider removing a Minister. If there are problems with the Minister's performance or attitude, the Premier needs to address it immediately. The Assembly and the public should expect as much and stand for nothing less. The responsibility that Ministers have to the people of the Northwest Territories and their power to make decisions that can affect people's lives on a daily basis mean that we must be vigilant in ensuring that they are performing their duties in accordance with a standard that the public finds acceptable.
Of course, we don't live in a perfect world, and sometimes issues can't be resolved. If there are votes to remove Ministers, such votes should never be subject to Cabinet solidarity. If I were to become Premier, I would certainly do my best to hold Ministers and the government to account, but what happens when I am gone? It is not enough to put some new faces in the same old system and hope for the best. We will never be able to design a perfect system that ensures accountability at all times, but we need to start implementing changes, codifying conventions, and creating expectations that will last beyond a single Assembly.
For example, in the report entitled "Lessons Learned," the Special Committee on Transition Matters recommended that there be no less than three fireside chats per year. These informal meetings between Regular Members and the Premier are intended to address concerns before they become problems and have been proven to work well in the past. I think that we had three in the past four years, and by the time that we did, it was too late.
During session, there should also be weekly meetings between the Premier and the chairperson of the Regular Member caucus, known in the last Assembly as the Standing Committee on Priorities and Planning. These are the types of practices that need to become conventions. Although there were obvious personality conflicts in the last Assembly, I believe that most problems resulted from a lack of communication. We need to open those channels, both formal and informal.
I have to say that I was astounded to learn that, in previous Assemblies, the Principal Secretary, the Premier's right-hand person, would regularly walk up and down the halls and speak with Regular Members and Cabinet Ministers to discuss issues or just get a sense of how everyone was doing. We never had that, but it should be an expectation.
There is also room to improve the relationship and increase collaboration between Cabinet and Standing Committees to the benefit of all of our residents. We need to adopt the recommendations in the Lessons Learned report that would require the Cabinet to consult with standing committees, as well as the public, at the beginning of the business planning and budget development process in addition to the process that already exists, whereby standing committee is consulted when the documents are virtually complete and the opportunity to have any substantial impact on the government's plans has long passed.
We must also adopt and codify some of the new collaborative methods of discussing potential policies and addressing issues with legislation that were pioneered in the previous Assembly. It might not sound novel, but by replacing protracted letter-writing campaigns, in which each side would wait days or weeks for responses, with actual face-to-face meetings, we were able to get better results in a day than we otherwise would in a month.
The Premier must also commit his or her government to working more closely with committees in regard to the timely introduction of legislation. The work that committees do is invaluable and directly affects the public's daily life, in many cases. We must ensure that the committees have adequate time to do that work. Such coordination could also create time for more special committees to be struck. It was only late in the last Assembly that the potential for a special committee to examine the health system was discussed. Allowing for such work could have far-reaching impacts for the people of the Northwest Territories and is another example of how Cabinet and Regular Members can collaborate for the benefit of the people
No discussion about accountability would be complete without a discussion of the bureaucracy. We all hear many complaints about how the bureaucrats are the ones really running the government and that the elected Members are just along for the ride. We hear that from the public service; we hear that from the public; we hear that from MLAs and from former Ministers and Premiers. I will say it again: the buck has to stop somewhere. If the bureaucracy is running the show, the Premier must take responsibility for that.
Maybe the most powerful tool that the Premier has is to appoint and remove deputy ministers. Either use it if you are facing problems, or step aside for someone who will. I am not saying that the next Premier has to start handing out pink slips left and right, but he or she cannot stand for any obstruction or subversion of the public will as expressed to public representatives.
That said, I don't look at the bureaucracy as the enemy. I figure that I have met most of the GNWT senior management, and I have a lot of respect for them. I honestly think that they work for the benefit of the North, and I think that I have a good relationship with most of them, although sometimes there is a weird dynamic between MLAs and senior management, but I think that we get along.
Ultimate authority and responsibility lies with the elected representatives, and I am not going to use the bureaucracy as a scapegoat. Instead, I argue that we must better utilize the public service. As an MLA, I am not supposed to talk to members of the public service about their work; however, we are a small jurisdiction and it is often unavoidable. I am always struck by how often I hear the same few complaints over and over again across departments and across regions.
The first is that issues identified on the front line are rarely addressed. When policies are developed in Yellowknife, they might be well-intentioned, but they don't always roll out smoothly on the ground. When our front-line staff raise concerns about policy and recommendations to improve service delivery, we need to listen. We need a robust feedback loop that not only improves the service that we offer, but also shows respect to our front-line staff.
The second complaint that I often hear about is that bold ideas and out-of-the-box thinking are stifled instead of encouraged. This has to change. We have lost a number of very good public servants for this very reason. Our vast educated and competent public service is the GNWT's greatest resource, and it is time we treat it as such.
We must also strive to make the GNWT's senior management more representative of our people, and this is an issue that, during the business planning process, we dealt with every single year. There are charts that show the number of Northerners in the senior management, the number of Indigenous people in senior management, and the number of women... well, not the number of women, but we can see them in those committee rooms. There is a clear underrepresentation of both Indigenous peoples and women in the senior ranks, all the way up to the deputy minister level, and this Assembly needs to change that. Not just talk about changing it, but I want to see real results. I want to see real equal representation of women and Indigenous peoples at the deputy minister and senior management levels by the end of this Assembly.
One other important change I want to mention, and it may not resonate with any of the new Members or members of the public, but it's a change that I believe will finally break down departmental silos and allow us to implement policies with more responsibility to our people and transfer the policy development power from the public service to the elected representatives. Those of us who have been Regular Members are aware of how invaluable committee support staff are. In particular, our research advisors have the seemingly impossible task of reading and analyzing all the documents received by committees and being able to provide Members with information about how a particular policy or piece of legislation will play out, or how it interacts with pieces of legislation from other departments or even other governments. I am not exaggerating when I say that Regular Members could not do their job without that assistance. This staff works directly with, and takes direction from, committees.
I was genuinely shocked when I learned that Cabinet does not have a similar body to support them and aid in the development of policy. Where there are policy positions within the departments, they are accountable to their deputy minister, not to Cabinet. There is no single body that can develop cross-departmental policies or strategies.
The other day, during a briefing, one of the new Members asked a question that exemplifies why this is a problem. They asked about the immigration file, and why it was split across two departments. The answer is because one department was focused on attracting investment, and the other one in bringing in workers. That put an end to the conversation, as it would have at the Cabinet table. Instead of a single immigration policy, we have two that are independent from each other. End of story.
Now, imagine if we had a policy development unit that could actually look at this issue holistically, not from within a departmental silo. We could even include Health and Social Services by once again looking at the possibility of attracting foreign physicians. We can include the Executive so that they could help lobby Ottawa to increase the Northwest Territories' profile in Ottawa as a destination for immigrants. We could engage Aurora College to help address language or education deficits.
This is just one example, and this is one of the critiques of consensus government, is that we don't have a robust way to develop policies the way party systems do, and this would help address that. Real-world issues rarely fit neatly into government silos, so we must address the structural issues within our own government that prevent us from breaking our little silos in the program development, and to maintain a bureaucratic barrier between policy and the elected representatives of the people.
Earlier this week, the 19 of us met with Indigenous leaders from across the NWT. As was noted by many participants, it was an historic event, the kind that is virtually unheard of in other jurisdictions. Despite the fact that our government has a much more progressive relationship with Indigenous governments than do the provinces, it was clear from discussions that there is still much frustration, and understandably so. The finalization and implementation of land claims and self-government agreements have stalled. The entire territory, all of us, will benefit from concluding unsettled claims and implementing agreements.
There is a general consensus that a new approach is needed to move forward. What does that approach look like? I'm not sure, but I'm sure that, whatever it is, it will have to make people uncomfortable. The GNWT has spent far too long in its comfort zone. Nothing should be off the table. We want to go back to the table with fresh eyes, and without the preconceived notions that have held us back.
One of my colleagues made a comment yesterday that I thought was interesting. Instead of the GNWT and Canada presenting offers to Indigenous governments, perhaps, the GNWT and Indigenous governments should be presenting offers to Canada. That's the kind of relationship we need to strive for. We need to work together in partnership because, as was said time and time again at the meeting, we are stronger together.
We also need to begin discussions about the future of the GNWT, and I've had this discussion with many of you. The GNWT is only 50 years old. What is it going to look like in another 50 years? We are a very unique jurisdiction. As we settle these claims and as we continue to implement self-government agreements, what will the role be for the Government of the Northwest Territories in 50 years from now or 100 years from now? As communities begin to draw down programs, what should those programs look like?
We need to start having these discussions because the programs that we design right now will be administered by Indigenous governments in the future. We need to implement the recommendations by the Standing Committee on Economic Development about the drafting of legislation and the inclusion of Indigenous governments. That report was specific to the devolution legislation, but, as we heard yesterday, we need to possibly expand that to include other legislation that will affect the communities. Legislation would help the social services.
This won't be easy. This won't be an easy sell. It is, essentially, giving up power, and that is not something that people like to do. It goes hand in hand with the next issue I want to talk about, regional empowerment. It is something that has been called "decentralization." I don't like using that term, because I've heard that term for a long time now and that term hasn't yielded any results.
When we look at services, when you look at new positions, it's always easy to come up with reasons why jobs, why services should be located in Yellowknife, instead of coming up with reasons why they should be located elsewhere. The immediate cost of keeping the position in the capital doesn't factor in one of the external factors, and that is something we need to change. Going forward, this government needs to focus on how we cannot just put a job in the community, but how we can move decision-making authority to a community.
I know there are certain units where there might be five people in Yellowknife, and a couple are elsewhere. That doesn't really make sense. That's just moving a couple of jobs. We need to take a different approach to this. I found it interesting that a lot of Yellowknife Members actually brought this up, that, when they went to the doors, there is a lot of concern about the economy in these small communities. We all see that when there are low graduation rates, when there is poverty, when there are needs for housing that affects all of us. There is only so much to go around, and right now everything is centred in Yellowknife. Yellowknife has had one of the highest household incomes in Canada for 20 years, and there are other communities where the average income is $20,000 to $30,000. Somehow, we have to address this regional disparity.
Finally, I want to talk about focusing on results. One of the criticisms that I've had, that many of us have had, that the public has had, is that the government is good at talking. It's good at producing piles of glossy documents to talk about what they're going to do, but we see very little action on it. The next Premier, whoever that may be, needs to put an end to this. Creating documents, creating strategies, shouldn't be an industry. This is the public money that we are using, and it needs to be used for the public good, not to keep people busy.
There have been a lot of suggestions today. There have been lots of good comments. There has been a lot of recognition of the need to improve relationships, and I just want to say I hope that whoever becomes Premier listens to all of the speeches today, because there were good elements that need to be incorporated. We need to work together going forward, and so, if I'm Premier, I'm happy to work with the other Members and incorporate their ideas. If I'm not, I hope that we can still work together and make our system of government, make our Legislature, more functional and provide more prosperity for the people of the Northwest Territories. Thank you.