Madam Speaker, I just realized how quickly time passes. Monday, in fact, will be the last day that you can reply to the budget address, I believe. So I wouldn't want there to be a rush of people at the last minute suddenly deciding that they should be replying to the budget. So I will take advantage today to make a brief reply, since I've done so ever since this item has been on the order paper.

I don't have a massive, prepared text, Madam Speaker. I'm not on the Standing Committee on Finance any more, so I'm not privy to all the inside discussions that take place within that committee and perhaps don't have the same grasp of all the details that I would have were I a serving Member of that committee.

I have a few observations to make though, Madam Speaker. The first one being about the criticism that this budget lacks focus. I've said many times in the past, it's very easy to be critical. It's very simple to be a critic. I would like my remarks to be taken as a reflection not on the fact that the people we have doing the work do things badly, but that perhaps we're limited because of the kind of system we have and therefore you are limited in the ability that you have to provide the kind of focus and direction you would like because of the nature of our consensus-type government.

I know that in the past we have referred to some of the mistakes that we've made in the past. I refer back to the beginning of this document, which outlines our fiscal position and outlook, and points out that from time to time we find ourselves going into debt or finding that we don't have enough money to serve our programs, because during the transfer we never made arrangements to make sure that there was a proper transfer of money. I refer particularly to fire suppression where we were given the responsibility for protecting the trees, but we weren't in fact given that responsibility but we were given responsibility to put out the fires when those trees were threatened.

The same kind of dilemma it seems to me is being posed by the possible vacuum that exists right now in relation to social housing. There is a bit of ambiguity when we hear, on one hand, that we're going to take an overall government approach, a package approach, when we get into our next meetings with the federal government to sort out of fiscal arrangements, that we won't be going piecemeal. Yet, for the past several months -- and it's certainly to his credit because he's shown, as I said before, bulldog tenacity in going to see the appropriate Minister of Housing in Ottawa. But you have someone who, in fact, is spending a tremendous amount of time trying to solve this problem with one Minister, yet we're told no we're not going to do it that way, we're going to do it a different way. We're going to have a total package approach. We're not going to take it bit by bit by bit. Yet that seems to be the way we're going.

There is also some ambiguity about what we are going to do with relation to taking over responsibility for things. On one hand we're told, no, the federal government has the legal responsibility for housing, so that's the position we're going to take. The point I'm making is that we've heard that there should be no ambiguity about who is responsible for housing. It is a federal responsibility. Yet, from time to time we hear that's one of the reasons we have to sell off the Power Corporation, because if we do that, look at the money we'll have to solve our housing problems. You get a mixed message when you're told we are going to be absolutely adamant that the responsibility of the federal government will remain and we won't equivocate on it, on the other hand we're told that if we had more money of our own then we would be able to solve the problem. We can't have it both ways. Either they're going to do it, and we're going to insist they do it, or we say it's our responsibility and we have to find the money to do it. So we get mixed messages. That's why, I think, you get comments that there's some lack of focus, some real sense that there is no plan in place to solve our problems.

As far as priorities are concerned, Madam Speaker, there's no doubt in my mind, since I was involved in education for many, many years in the early years of my life that I will be accused of some bias. But it seems to me that the Government of the Northwest Territories is not out of line in making education and training a priority. That's the position that's been taken by every industrialized country in the world today. That is the solution. You have to have a very well-trained education workforce. That is the argument why the United States in now in decline. It's an empire that's rotting because the education system is not working. Ninety million people, they reckon, in the United States, find it very difficult to simply fill out a form. There are lots of forms, as we all know, that citizens are asked to fill in these days just to be a functioning member of society, let alone a strong economic unit.

Those countries that are providing a good, solid, modern, forward-looking education system for the young people, are leading the world. That's the way the economies are going. That's the point we also made three years ago in our Special Committee on the Northern Economy. People couldn't understand that that's an economic issue. Your trained workforce is where it all starts because if you don't have the guns you're not going to win the war, and that's the name of the game. So I certainly appreciate the position of the government and also the response from SCOF, that this is an issue of priority and I'm glad to see that we're putting the resources into it. It's not a biased view, it's the view that's held by nearly every economist in the world today, that that is where you have to put your effort.

I know I've been criticized in the past because I haven't made it absolutely clear what I mean about transportation and transportation infrastructure. I know that Members in this House accuse me of making statements about roads to nowhere. It seems to me that the priority that this government has placed to try to do something on the Mackenzie Highway makes sense, because it ain't a road to nowhere. You're talking about linking up places, where there are people, or where there are goods that are being transported, and it's so obvious that if you have communities linked along a line --, an old transportation car that existed even before we thought of roads -- that that's what we should be doing. That isn't a road to nowhere.

What worries me is when you have some scheme that you suddenly see as a vision that will create expectations that may never happen. We know there are people needing services and that the services will be provided. But if all you have is a dream, and the dream hasn't been thought through, then perhaps it's not a good way to spend your money. It's just a pipe dream. So I'm happy to say that that in fact is being given consideration because it makes sense to do that, despite what some people in the city of Yellowknife may think, that a priority should be a road to the coast. That will happen one day. One day I'm sure that will happen. But things have to evolve in a natural, organized, planned fashion and that's the position I would always take.

I've looked through the other departments and I've worried very, very much about how our government intends to get the kind of revenues it needs to do the work that needs to be done ahead. I can see that it's very difficult in our form of government to do the kinds of things that you like to do. I know three years ago Mr. Kakfwi was talking about having to legislate. We have huge problems so maybe we have to legislate. In a consensus House like this, it's very difficult to do that. It's okay for us to legislate ourselves and take the two per cent off our own salaries, but you try to legislate to do that with all kinds of other people and it's very, very difficult and you will put tremendous burdens on us to do that.

It's very difficult in our form of government to get a tough bill through the House. In my opinion, Mr. Pollard was lucky last year that he was able to get his payroll tax through, because all the thinking, all the talking, all the impetuous for months before that was that how are you going to get people to agree that we should do this because it's an unknown tax, the impact was going to be this or that, it was unknown and people were worried about it. Although we did all agree to it, I know that, personally, in Yellowknife people were very, very upset with me for even voting for it. It's very difficult to get taxes like that through the House. A corporate tax is a bit easier because it doesn't effect every individual in the way that the personal taxes do, individual taxes.

I note that if you really believe that the way to go is to develop an economy throughout small business, they have been burdened. It's incredible, the amount of burden that we put on small business that have to worry about GST, the payroll tax and all the other accounting that we have to do just to keep little businesses floating. They spend an inordinate amount of time just to do the paperwork. It seems to me that has to be sorted out somehow.

Another problem I see in our consensus type House to do tough things is when you identify, Madam Speaker in our budget book, that we are going to really look at the way in which we handle the public service, the management of the public service. It's all right to say there's one-third of our money there. That's the place, obviously, where we can look for savings. Again, we don't have the power to legislate the way other people do and to use the power of the numbers. But you really don't have control over that process. The best you have is a shared responsibility. It's not something that you can say we're going to do this, bang. When you sit down with people it's a give and take process. You're not going to be able to say we want to take. If that's the goal of the exercise, just to take, you're not going to win because you'll end up going to arbitration. I'm afraid that our one or two per cent that we've taken off ourselves will not provide you with much of a precedent to settle a dispute about salaries or benefits. Everything else that you want to do is going to be at a table, it's bilateral and you don't have the power. It's a shared responsibility and it's not part of management of government, as such. That's a different process. Managing a government and bargaining are two completely different things.

Having said those things, Madam Speaker, I'm really not being negative about this budget. What I'm saying is that the faults that our government are being credited with or discredited with, are because of the nature of our system not because of the people who are in it. I believe they're doing the best they can with the tools we have available to us. When you look at achievements over the many years, even though we have from time to time been very critical, we still exist, we're still struggling along. For our all faults, we still seem to be able to get out business done.

So that is this year's response to the budget address. I was very happy to be the first to do so. Thank you.

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