Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I am very pleased to be able to rise and give my reply to the budget address this afternoon. I say that because I believe the current budget carries several important implications for the people and the communities of the Northwest Territories.
Over the past several months, I have been privileged to serve as a member of the Standing Committee on Finance, and to participate in the preparation of that committee's report. I wish to say that I strongly support the position taken by the standing committee, but today I also wish to raise some additional points that I bring forward, not as a committee Member, but rather as the Member for Baffin Central.
I will begin by speaking about an issue that I think has had significant influence on the development of this government's fiscal policy, particularly, in the area of economic development and tourism.
Mr. Speaker, that issue has to do with the distribution of portfolio assignments within our current Cabinet. Although, I was generally pleased with direction taken by the Government Leader in her Cabinet reorganization, I continue to have concerns about the fact that a single Minister has shared responsibility for the Department of Finance, and the Department of Economic Development and Tourism.
Mr. Speaker, I believe that the philosophies underline the tasks of those departments, do conflict with each other. Right from the start of the 12th Assembly, this House has been told that the government has entered a time of restraint. This was again emphasized in the opening address for this session, and now in the budget address for 1991-92.
The appropriate lead department in developing strategies to address restraint is the Department of Finance. Its key function, at this point in time, is to ensure that the necessary controls and planning are in place to turn around the excess of previous years. At this time, in our history, Mr. Speaker, it is concerned with reduction.
On the other hand, the Ministers other department is concerned with development of economic system and products. It is concerned with growth. The Department of Finance, Mr. Speaker, is geared towards centralized function.
It requires intensive attention to headquarters operation in Yellowknife, and it is a top down at administration.
On the other hand, the Department of Economic Development and Tourism simply cannot use the same top down approach. It must listen to, and work with grassroots ideas that are generated within the regions. The Department of Finance requires the Minister's attention to be focused on Yellowknife operations. The Department of Economic Development makes him put his priority in the regions.
These roles conflict, and I believe would compromise decision making in the office of any Minister with these two portfolios. What I wish to stress here, is not with the honourable Member for Hay River, but rather with the Government Leader's decision to assign these two departments to the same Minister.
Finally, Mr. Speaker, I would note that the ministerial workload for both these portfolios is overwhelming, as I am sure you remember from your time as the Minister of Finance. I am concerned that the heavy time pressures involved in heading these two departments are causing important work to be overlooked in each of them.
The Department of Finance for instance, has been unable to bring forward an assessment of the impact of the past years expenditure management program, which restraint government hiring and contracting.
Similarly, I wonder what is the status of the Public Accounts Committee's June recommendation of the role of Comptroller General be reviewed? Certainly there have been no ministerial announcements, or statements, as to whether this important initiative is being acted on.
On the economic development side, I am concerned about whether our current Minister has been able to spend time building the government corporations and agencies established during the 11th Assembly. There are concerns about the lack of direction within the N.W.T. Development Corporation and as far as I understand, there are still no regional boards for the credit corporation.
In response to question from my honourable colleague from Deh Cho last week, we learned that agricultural marketing agencies, that were seen as a priority at the end of the 11th Assembly, still have not been established.
As honourable Members know, I have been concerned with several aspects of our northern fisheries, including scope and administration of the contract with Co-Pro Ltd. of Ottawa, federal/territorial consultation on the issuance of fishing licences, and priority setting from the exploratory fishery.
I understand that concerns about fisheries are not confined to Baffin region. I am concerned that some elements of the Great Slave commercial fishing community have commented on the lack of governmental leadership in dealing with the Freshwater Fish Marketing Corporation, and as my honourable colleague from Natilikmiot pointed out on Friday, the department seems to have lost contact with small businesses in Kitikmeot.
Mr. Speaker, I would again repeat that I am not blaming the honourable Minister. I know that he is a talented and hard working Member of this House, however, the challenge of combining these two busy and competing departments is more than any single Minister should be expected to take responsibility for.
It is my position that the Government Leader should reassign the portfolios of the current Minister, so that role and time conflicts are minimized. I will be raising this matter on other occasions over the course of the current session.
Mr. Speaker, I would also like to make some comments on specific parts of the budget, which the Minister of Finance brought forward last Thursday.
Honourable Members, will know, for instance, that the problem of domestic violence has been with us for many years. It will continue to remain with us unless we do something about it. Although some progress has been made in terms of crisis shelter for women and their children, I find it astounding that there is so little money spent on treating the offender. There is an almost total absence of effective, culturally appropriate treatment for batterers or sexual offenders, both in our correctional facilities or in the community setting.
Now that corrections has become the responsibility of the Department of Justice, we must be mindful that this need for services does not fall between the cracks.
Mr. Speaker, there is also a need to improve support services to victims of family violence or sexual assault. The Minister of Social Services should be aware that apart from some crisis services, there is very little that is available for victims in our smaller communities. What the Minister has to realize is that the stress which victims experience, as they go through, is not a short term issue. It is not an individual issue, either. This has an impact of the family members, and others in the community, who are thrust into the helping role. It is a heavy burden to carry, Mr. Speaker, and there is very little support from the department in terms of funded programming to assist in this area. We need additional resources, both funding and expertise, to be directed toward these community needs.
Mr. Speaker, there is another area in which we need additional professional resourcing, at least in the Baffin, I would expect that this is true throughout the territories, and that is in the area of dental services. I hope the Minister of Health will carefully consider the fact that families are presently having to pay their own way to Iqaluit from locations throughout the Baffin in order to have their children's teeth looked at by a qualified dentist.
The visitation schedule that has been set for the dental team is simply inadequate to meet the community needs. Our children have other needs, Mr. Speaker. I will not speak extensively on the education system at the present time, but honourable Members should know that, like many others, I am concerned that our present approach is not entirely sufficient.
One idea that I would like see the Minister consider, is an increased approach to supporting student exchange programming. I do not mean north-south exchanges, Mr. Speaker, but rather an exchange of students between our northern communities. As the Minister knows, there is a wealth of knowledge to be gained from experiencing how others in the Northwest Territories live.
It seems as though the department is not paying enough attention to this. I will never forget the time I spent as a resident of Lutsel K'e, it was Snowdrift at the time, Mr. Morin's constituency. I had a chance to experience, first-hand, the differences and similarities which exist between the Inuit communities, where I grew up, and the Dene communities that have continued to survive throughout history.
I learned what it was like to accompany Chipewyan families on the land, and to discover the northerners who share the same concern about the animals and the environment which surround us. Sometimes I think that discussions about the constitutional future of the north, and especially of the division of the Northwest Territories, would be much easier if only we had all shared that experience. I will be encouraging the Minister to carefully consider the benefit of this new idea.
While I am on the topic of hunting and trapping, Mr. Speaker, I need to call on our Minister of Renewable Resources to undertake a needs assessment of the organizational and financial support currently provided to H.T.A.s across the Northwest Territories. Presently the ability of the Hunters' and Trappers' Associations to take on the tasks which have to be undertaken, and this in spite of the fact that an increasing amount of the Association's time and effort have to be directed toward the completion of government surveys input on legislative, regulatory initiatives, and participation in planning activities. If the government is seriously interested in receiving community input from these H.T.A.'s, it will ensure that they have adequate resources to carry out the work.
Finally, Mr. Speaker, I would like to make a few brief comments about two of my pet economic development considerations. First, most honourable Members have already heard about some of my concerns with regard to fisheries development in the Baffin region. To summarize, the priority areas I would like the government to act quickly on, is providing a larger and more suitable fish plant and docking facility for the existing fishery in Pangnirtung. A strategic plan for the aggressive marketing of fish and other products. A strategy for building markets, and a distribution network for the incidental catch which consists mainly of large Greenland sharks, because it is wrong to see it left rotting and wasted on the sea ice.
My second pet project for economic development, has to do with the issue of import substitution, about which my honourable colleague from Keewatin Central spoke so clearly at our last sitting. The Department of Economic Development should be working now to promote greater inter-community trade throughout the Northwest Territories. This is one of the important recommendations made almost three years ago in the S.C.O.N.E. report, but it has not been acted on, by either the former, or the current Minister. In an earlier speech to this House, I commented that there is no reason why the firm in Fort McPherson should not be allowed to provide all canvas products for government use across the Northwest Territories.
Muskox meat, turbot and even some agricultural products, could be provided to residential schools and institutions throughout the territories by northern-owned and northern-operated producers. The Minister of Economic Development needs to devote more attention to the issues of import substitution. Mr. Speaker, these are only some of the matters that I wanted to raise relative to the budget before us. I am sure that we will have an opportunity to discuss them fully as we proceed through the appropriation debate. I look forward to addressing these on behalf of my constituents in the days to come. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
---Applause