Mr. Chairman, I did not catch your eye when we were still on page 10. But it is very brief, if I could. I know we have problems when we refer to what happened in the past government because that is history now. It does not matter much. We do not have a party system here. We have an ongoing, flowing system, and a lot of the same people are still around. We have the same kinds of problems as we had a year ago, and yet a year ago we had identified that it was very important for us to set up a new department of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources. In the Northern Energy Accord we had umpteen briefings on it. We identified transportation as being a key thing for the development of our economy, and in order to give it significance and to give it focus we had to not just state it as a priority but in fact, create a new department to look after developing transportation infrastructure. Also at that time, if you recall, Mr. Chairman, because of the tremendous interest in the last year -- and the Member for Thebacha would recall this very, very clearly -- that safety and the concern for mine safety was such a huge issue that it was felt that we should set up a department for this, to look after safety, the safety of people throughout the Northwest Territories, not only in mines but just safety of our people was so important that we had to set up a department for it. So we in fact created all this government infrastructure in order to meet the program of the government. This is the program. So in order to help the program and to highlight the priorities, this is how we are going to set ourselves up.
Government Lacking In Focus And Vision
So now just a year later we have got a document in front of us just simply to provide a restructuring of transfers of programs, and I wonder really the degree to which we are committed, still, to economic development. We spent four years saying, you know, economic development or privatization or whatever, creating jobs, creating wealth, all these different ploys you could have to create wealth and to reduce the dependency of individuals on government, and we suddenly find that the only thing that matters is government. This government, the way I have seen it over the last few months -- we are completely preoccupied with government, and one of the main recommendations in this report is the reduction of people's reliance and dependence on government. That is the main story of this report: Reduce people's dependence on government. Yet the complete preoccupation of it is with government and the government's service, and so on, and yet with no idea of focus. What is the focus? At least the examples I gave you were attempts to give some sense of priority, to say, "Okay, this is the stuff that people worry about so therefore we will do this." I fail to see that in the documents that we have. The sense of vision, of focus and so on, is just simply, well, it is government but we are going to do government in a different way.
So the fear I have, Mr. Chairman, is that when I look through this page, which is a kind of introduction that gives you a bit of background, the transitional period leading to this report, it bothers me that, right or wrong, at least there was some sense of direction, of focus and so on. What we have got left, it seems to me, does not have that. We do not have a sense of where we are going. In what kinds of ways are we going to create employment opportunities? How are we going to handle a lot of these things, which are ongoing problems for us?
I think it is the wrong solution. We did this in education in 1981-82; we said, "Well, we do not know what the hell we are doing, really, but let us let the communities decide." You know, we just handed it to somebody else. Maybe they would do a better job than we did. And it is no solution just simply to say, "Well, you know, the solution is to give people control over their lives, and so on," and maybe give them an instrument that is no good to them. It is no good handing a program over that is of no use to somebody. Maybe they want something completely different.
So what I am worried about and concerned about is that as we go through this document, we are simply talking about government again, reshaping government. We are not talking, really, about where we are going. What is the vision? How are we going to solve all these problems that, in fact, have been plaguing us for so long, if we do not at least begin to look at more than just structure and form and everything else? It seems to me that is just doing what we did in the past, saying we do not know what to do so we will give it to somebody else to do, and anyway things are rough now. We do not have enough money, so we will let them worry about that too. That is the kind of accusation that may be made unless we can come up with some kind of sense of vision of the kinds of things we could be doing.
I am not talking about huge, expensive programs because so many things can be done which do not necessarily have to cost a lot of money. There are all kinds of things you can do. I do not get that sense after reading the document. I am sure we will have an opportunity to discuss it later on as we go through it page by page so that we can have some sense of vision as to where the government is going in terms of services. I hope we can get some sense of vision as far as the future of our territory is concerned, beyond this basic structural issue. Thank you.