Mr. Chairman, I would like to look at Tabled Document 9-12(2), Strength at Two Levels. As Members of the committee, we would like to go through it page by page.

Does the committee agree?

Agreed.

---Agreed

Thank you. I will allow any Member who wishes to make general comments to do so before we go into it page by page. That is what I am going to do. General comments before page by page. Member for Thebacha.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The intent to go through Strength at Two Levels was to bring back to the forum of this House an opportunity for ordinary Members to be able to advise government as to some of their concerns that are put forth in this report; and as a result of the questioning in the House yesterday, it appears that there has been no process to date where ordinary Members of the Legislative Assembly are given opportunity to indicate to government what we think of the report and what we think of some of the direction that this report is recommending. The overall report, we want to stress, is a government document; it was formulated by the government, initiated by the government, and given to the government to look at. Some of the decisions, I believe, they are intending to concur with and find out ways to implement some of the recommendations. The concern that I have heard in respect to Strength at Two Levels is -- when the report was being formulated there was a concern expressed to me a number of times at the lack of consultation in respect to formulating the recommendations of this report.

The Beatty report, the Beatty team, or the team that formulated this report, did not consult enough with the communities or the groups that are being affected by some of the significant recommended changes that are being proposed, and that has been a concern expressed, particularly in areas that affect not only community government but many of the people in the smaller communities that will be proposing changes as a result of this report. There has been basically no opportunity, or very little opportunity, besides the MLAs taking this report back to their communities and seeing ways that they can get this report discussed among the communities, and then coming back to see whether the communities recommend the recommendations. What has happened, Mr. Chairman, is that these recommendations have been looked at, and it appears that there is a reply or a strategy to address these recommendations, and there has been no time that the ordinary Members have been given any type of opportunity to state publicly whether we concur with these recommendations. This has been a concern to many Members in this House.

When this report was tabled in December, there was an understanding and agreement by the government and the ordinary Members that we would retable this report, and as a result of retabling we would formulate discussions on the report and hopefully some type of strategy would be developed. But as it appears, and I want to emphasize that the appearance is the fact that there has been a strategy developed, an implementation being considered for the strategy that has been developed, without consultation from the ordinary Members. I cannot emphasize the concern in respect to this. This government has made a commitment to work with all Members of this House, and it appears that that commitment has been overlooked.

Mr. Chairman, the report in itself -- and that is why we propose to go through the report page by page -- there have been comments in this House, and I refer to some of the replies given to ordinary Members such as myself by the Government Leader, stating that this report has been too technical and that absorbing some of the comments written in the report would be difficult for Members like myself.

Point of order.

Point of order, Ms. Cournoyea.

Point Of Order

Mr. Chairman, I did not at any time stress that it was too technical and imply that the ordinary Members would not be able to understand. This is the second time this was brought up. The statement that I made was the technicality of setting up the process. It had nothing to do with the intelligence of any Member.

Madam Government Leader, was that a point of order or a point of clarification to the other Member?

Mr. Chairman, I believe it is a point of order, mainly because it is imputing that there is a statement said by myself that questions the intelligence of ordinary Members. That was never my intention when I was discussing the technical nature of setting up the process. It had nothing to do with the motives being imputed. Thank you.

In that case I will have to review the transcript and report back on that. Mr. Nerysoo, you have a point of order too?

No, Mr. Chairman, I was going to challenge the point of order that was raised, that it was not a point of order. A point of order deals with procedure and not with regard to a concern that is raised on the comments made by another Member.

I will review that matter and report back to the committee. Proceed, Member for Thebacha.

Little Input From Ordinary Members On "Strength At Two Levels"

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As I had said earlier, Members have been expressing grave concern with respect to the point that there has been no opportunity for them to be able to indicate to government, no forum of any type for public discussion, to be able to indicate to government the report in totality. There has never been one session during our sessions here that we have even discussed one page of this report; and the government, as a result, has developed the report, Reshaping Northern Government, and from that document come different types of concepts to be further discussed in this session.

Mr. Chairman, I guess the point that I would like to stress to the government is that everything seems to be going ahead with Strength at Two Levels, with the recommendations, with very little input from the Members on this side of the House. There are many Members that object to that. Not all Members have taken the opportunity to talk to the government about some of the recommendations, and as a result they feel isolated from government and government formulating their decisions on the different recommendations that came forth in Strength at Two Levels.

Mr. Chairman, because of the fact that this document being formulated, Reshaping Northern Government, has basically been developed by the government as a result of Strength at Two Levels, we would propose to go through the Beatty report and that the government listen to some of the concerns we have with respect to the Strength at Two Levels report, as Members, and we would like to proceed to go through it page by page. Thank you.

Thank you. General comments. Mr. Lewis.

Beatty Report A Product Of The 11th Assembly

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I do not want to prolong this business of making introductory comments to a report that we have had for some time now. What seems to have happened is that we have never really sat down in committee to deal with something that really was a product of the 11th Assembly, and it is quite clear that that was the origin of it. What bothers me a lot is that during the 11th Assembly the Executive started -- it is fully explained in the Beatty report how the 11th Assembly got its agenda.

Not long after the election, the Executive Council went out to Snare Rapids and began developing a kind of agenda, unusual in the sense that you have an agenda for government after the election rather than before it. But in our system that is the way it is. You decide after the election what the people are going to get, and the cabinet goes off into the wilderness.

It was outlined at the beginning of this report what kind of government the people were going to get. They outlined five areas: economic growth; improving education; shaping public government; supporting aboriginal initiatives; and also taking our place in Canada as a territory and also a place in the world. Two other ones were added at a later stage: The social issues became a major topic of discussion during the 11th Assembly, and we spent quite a bit of time, including a mid-term session of the caucus in Baker Lake, in which social issues were supposed to have been dealt with in some depth. Then in June 1987 a seventh priority was set -- it is pretty late in the mandate of the committee, half way through -- the improvement of government administration.

So really the last Assembly did have a kind of a platform or an agenda. What bothers me a little about this report is that it has somehow assumed the status of being the government's agenda. This is what this government is all about. The danger is that we are going to spend all our time navel-gazing and looking at the machine and oiling the machine, and you know, shining the machine, and looking at the machine, and admiring the machine. The point is that governments do things, you know, and it is very, very difficult for me, having sat now in this House -- it is the second session -- to know what this government is all about, because it has been dominated by this government's obsession with the famous Beatty report, and we therefore have come to the conclusion that since so much of the energy of the government is going to look at the machinery, that we had better spend some time at it, because it is our government. It is not just the Executive Council's government; it belongs to everybody. If we are going to spend our time in an obsession, if you like, with the structure, then it makes sense that everybody, in fact, would become involved.

The concern most people have is that despite all the good will indicated publicly that we were going to have a different kind of government now -- it would be an open government and there would be a real attempt this time to involve people -- the understanding, I suppose, was not clearly enough set down at the beginning when we listened to these overtures to involve people.

Really, what we had in mind as ordinary Members was to say,"Fine," you know, "It is wonderful to do something like this, because a lot of it I agree with personally. There is an awful lot I can agree with." The problem that we have is that when we agree to do something, there is always some kind of gap in understanding on what we have agreed on. I know from talking to people that I meet every day that our understanding was that, having got this document Strength at Two Levels, what would happen was that there would be an involvement of people to look at this piece of work and then decide what to do with it, and since that has not happened people now feel like outsiders. They say, "Well, what is going to happen is that the government will involve us when they have already taken the bike or the truck down the track so far that you are never going to take it anywhere else," because they have decided where they want to take it, and there is that feeling among Members that they really are only going to get involved when they can do no damage, when they can make no significant changes to anything.

Momentum For Change Must Be Built Early

I appreciate what the Government Leader is trying to do, because there are all kinds of evidence that unless you move and get something done, and get it done early on and build some momentum and some energy, and so on, it is very, very difficult to accomplish change. But if you will accept that, will accept that is what you have to do -- you have to move on something; you cannot wait forever -- but what has happened now is that people have been given an understanding that they would be involved in a significant exercise, and the fear among the ordinary Members I have talked to is that this is just tokenism in the sense that, yes, we will agree, you know. We will go along with it, but we cannot involve people at the stage that is so critical that they may slow down the process. But I would argue that by not following through on the commitment, on the same understanding that the rest of us, had the government is in fact slowing up the process itself. We cannot be blamed for slowing the process up if the commitment is not made that from this document here we would be fully involved in determining the direction it should take. It has taken a life of its own, and now whatever we do will be seen as an afterthought.

In my opinion it was a mistake not to get all of the three people that were chosen by other Members right at the beginning so that they could examine this report, because once you have agreed on what you are going to do, then people who have a little bit of pride are not going to be satisfied with saying, "Well, you guys have decided, anyway, and all you want us to do is to go along now on the ride. The bus has left months ago, but you can come along and enjoy the scenery."

I am afraid a lot of people will not be satisfied with that, because once you have decided what you are going to do, how you are going to do it, and so on, then that really becomes an administration job. As politicians we are interested in policy. What is the policy? What is the program? What is the direction? What is the shape?

You have already developed a second document dealing with the shape. You are going to reshape something, and you are going to decide what the shape is going to be without any input from any Member on this side. There were some very willing people here who would have been quite happy to have helped to take a document like this and to put it into a form where we know what the shape is going to look like. Then you would have some willing, co-operative people who would have been part of the process, would have a sense of ownership, and would want to go with you for the rest of the ride. But they do not have any sense of ownership in the program, the process, the reshaping, or anything, and the fear is that you are going to bring them in too late and there is going to be a loss of dignity among those people who feel that they are an afterthought. Those are my opening comments, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you. General comments. Mr. Nerysoo.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have had an opportunity to read the presentations that have been made and listen to the questions and answers that have been asked by Members, and answers given by the Members of cabinet and our Government Leader.

I want to say that while I might accept some of the remarks that have been made, that there is an interest in seeking the views of Members of this Assembly and the general public about the direction that we wish to take in reshaping northern government, the fact is that the documents and the answers really do not coincide with one another. There have been continuing suggestions that there is no implementation plan; yet your own statement indicates that there is an implementation plan. I am not going to argue about that. I just want to make some additional comments. Maybe that is where the confusion lies for me.

Preoccupation With Beatty Report

I think that I have to agree with Mr. Lewis that there seems to be a continuous preoccupation with the matter of the Beatty report and its recommendations without clearly indicating to the public, generally, what the policies of our government are going to be over the next four years, or what direction you wish to take.

Implementing The 1969 White Paper

The other aspect that I want to point out is -- suffice it to say that despite all our best efforts, and recognizing that we have some significant financial problems, we have to be awfully careful about what it is we dismantle and how we dismantle it, in terms of our government. It is quite clear that even in the areas of health, the Beatty group pointed out quite clearly that we had some very serious problems about how we were, as a government, implementing policies as they applied to status Indians and status Inuit, and that we were, in fact, implementing a policy that was not occurring even in the provinces. We were, in fact, applying, I guess, in many respects, the 1969 White Paper of trying to associate all status people into a program similar to that of all other non-status people. It was the federal government's and, in many respects, our own fault that we were not taking advantage of the financial situation that the Government of Canada had offered to us, and we were doing that to ourselves internally. Maybe there is an attempt on our part to slowly work into implementing the 1969 White Paper here in the North, but at least we should be up front and honest about it and say that status Indians or status Inuit will no longer be treated according to federal government policy. Then let us say it. That is my feeling. If that is the policy of this government and that is the policy of our Assembly, then we should say that to the people of the North.

In terms of some of the questions that had to do with transferring responsibilities to communities, and I do not think that there is anyone here that would argue against the direction in which people want to take this government in improving the ability of people in the communities to take on more responsibilities for themselves. But there is no advantage for communities to take on responsibilities if it means they are going to be, in future, in the financial straight-jacket that this government is in right now with federal moneys that have been transferred to us. It makes no sense for people in the communities. I think that we should not be placing communities in the situation where we give them the impression that our financial situation is such that we can afford to allow people to take on more and more responsibilities with no consideration for the financial situations that they could find themselves in.

I can tell you right now, with the very little authorities and responsibilities that most people in the communities take on, that we do have communities right now where they have simple municipal services that have significant financial deficits. We have to be clear that the efforts that we are going to make in program transfers, service transfers, are going to carry with them all the financial resources that are available to them. We cannot say that it is an excuse for getting away from the financial obligations that we should be transferring. But I do think that we must be prepared to accept that that is what is going to happen.

Amalgamating Of Departments

On the matter of the points of dealing with such things as amalgamating departments -- and I made this point during our presentation and our view of reshaping government when the Government Leader kindly allowed us to have a presentation made by those individuals involved in government and her staff to at least update us on what was occurring. But I do want to say that on the matter -- I will be very specific -- of petroleum, oils and lubricants going to the Power Corporation I can tell you right now that I am not certain whether or not that is really in the interest of the economy of the North or the people of the North or the business community of the North, if the idea of placing that responsibility in the Power Corporation could create a monopoly. We do not know, but it is possible. We need to get a better understanding and an interpretation and explanation from our government on that responsibility and how that is intended, so as not to challenge the ability of private enterprise to get into that particular business.

The other point, in terms of even Government Services -- I was not certain how the matter of computers associated themselves with Public Works responsibilities. Maybe again the Government Leader is going to have to clarify that for me or those people who are associated with that particular discussion.

I just wanted to be certain that these things were being co-ordinated so that if that decision is finally made, that it is clear what divisions of responsibilities are to take place and whether or not there is a reduction in the kinds of programs that are going to be transferred, one program to the next program or next department.

Language And Education Separate Issues

I can say to you that on the matter of the super Education department -- at least it seems that way anyhow, where you are dealing with education, employment and culture -- I was not really sure how the matter of language is really associated with education. I thought that particular matter was a separate issue. Now maybe there is a responsibility on the part of education to deliver education programs on behalf of students or as part of an educational program. But I think that the matter of culture and language is far broader than just the question of education. So I was not clear how that was going to fit.

I was also not certain of how employment was to fit, whether there was a change in the mandate of the department and whether or not we were going to take on a labour force responsibility -- I guess the CEIC, Canada Employment and Immigration Commission, responsibility -- or whether there was a different interpretation to be given to the employment section.

So those had to be explained, and those have to be clarified. I do not think that we, as a government, should be trying to take over a responsibility presently in the hands of the federal government and funded by the federal government, at our expense. I do have many other comments to make and will make them as we go through the document and each section. Thank you.

Thank you. Mr. Arvaluk.

Health Care Efficiency Versus Doing Everything In NWT

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. On the health section on page 151 of Strength at Two Levels, there is a concern in the Keewatin, especially, which has no hospital except in Churchill. Like my friend who just talked about the petroleum, oil and lubricants and NWT Power Corporation integration, I would say it sounds good on paper and for administration but it may have a very negative economic impact. Likewise with health services. Just because we want to have a baby in the NWT, we ship pregnant women and others to a hospital in Yellowknife from Sanikiluaq and Repulse Bay rather than to Churchill, Manitoba, because it looks good to have all the facilities in the NWT; maybe even cheaper in the long run because of transportation costs in Keewatin, or otherwise it would be cheaper and more efficient to continue to send patients to Churchill, Manitoba. If you would bear with me a little bit, Mr Chairman, there are several questions in that section that should be dealt with -- the impact, the cost, benefits or lack of benefits -- with the whole idea of having everything within the NWT rather than looking at what is efficient. The Beatty report wanted to make the government more efficient and cost-effective, and this proposal or recommendation in the Beatty report will not do that. So that is one of the general comments I wanted to make. Thank you.

Thank you. Are there any further general comments? Ms. Cournoyea.

Mr. Speaker, I am listening attentively to what is being said, particularly to the more detailed comments. Mr. Chairman, the comments that were made by the last two speakers are the work of the committee. This is the kind of work that is going to be taking place when we get into the implementation, and these are the recommendations that are here, our recommendations, and this is the work that will have to take place. Thank you.

Thank you. Are there any further general comments? Mr. Koe.

Incorrect Data Relative To Inuvik

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just a few comments before we get into page by page on the information and data that is presented in the Strength at Two Levels report. Much of the data or information which refers to activities or tasks in Inuvik in many cases is not correct, and in discussing why with representatives of the organizations and groups in Inuvik, there seemed to be a lack of consultation by whoever was on this task group with the organization representatives in Inuvik, and as such, much of the data is skewed or misrepresented. Also, when we were in the ABC committee talking about some of the aspects that the committee was looking at -- the health boards and Arctic College -- in both cases representatives of these groups in Inuvik stated point-blank that they were not consulted and that the information in the reports was wrong. My point, I guess, is that I have a little bit of a problem taking the information that is presented in this report at face value, and seemingly every time I refer to something, I have to question myself whether it is true or not. In many cases where information was misrepresented, I have been able to get true facts; we will talk to those when we go into the detail. That is basically my point: that the credibility of some of the information in these reports may not be there. Mahsi.