Mr. Chairman, I have just a few general comments. This secretariat has a very difficult task. It's an infamous central agency and has to deal with all the very strongly-held beliefs of departments that they know what they're doing, that everything they're doing is very, very important and that the secretariat really shouldn't be questioning what they're doing or how they're doing it. But, there is a real need for a central function and for a group to provide some discipline on spending through government programs.
Although the Standing Committee on Finance has some constructive comments to make about how we feel things can be improved, I want to go on record as saying that I think the chairman of the Financial Management Board and the secretary of the board have done a very good job under difficult circumstances. The examples that we use aren't meant as criticism of them.
On a personal note, having studied this government and Legislative Assembly for many years, I think that this government and Assembly, like previous governments and assemblies, take on very ambitious programs. We try to do a lot of things. I think sometimes we and the public forget that there are only 65,000 people in the Northwest Territories and we really do have a very small government. The sort of things that the Ontario government can do or the BC government can do, the sophisticated programs that they can run, becomes very difficult for us to do. We can't do them all, just because we don't have the numbers.
I think what has happened over the last 15 years, and it's not just this government, but probably with every government, is we've always tried to do too many things. We've loaded down our civil service with too many tasks. When you do that, it is just physically impossible to complete all the tasks. I look at our political structures and compare that to 65,000 people in southern Canada who have a mayor, six alderman, and a small administration. They would elect part of an MP and part of an MLA, and that's it. We have a very, very complex structure to try to manage the affairs of 65,000 people.
There's a lot of pressure on our government to do the things that people see are being done in other jurisdictions. It gets very, very tough. There are some examples given in our committee report of the evaluation initiatives of the department which they weren't able to achieve. The reality is, at the end of the day, with limited resources, we have to decide what we're going to do with them. Sometimes, unfortunately, a decision is made to deal with the issues in the field and not give the resources to the central agency to evaluate what will happen there. It's too bad because, as our report said, many times the evaluation component could probably pay for itself.
The other example was that of the fall budget. I think the original intent, and it was a good one, was there was a very legitimate concern that we were having problems getting our construction done on time. I think the experiment was one that really had to happen because if we hadn't tried it, people would be still asking for it today. It wouldn't have gone away. I can't argue with the original Minister's decision and the Cabinet's decision, because they were getting a lot of criticism, to do something differently.
Two things happened with that approach. One is, unfortunately -- and this is not the fault of the secretariat or the Minister -- there are other reasons why departments were late, so we weren't able to totally achieve the major objective of the split budget. The second, and to me the most important, issue -- and why we in the Standing Committee on Finance think this issue should be looked at again -- is that though you can separate, physically and in time, consideration of a capital budget and O and M budget, the reality is both budgets are inextricably tied. The other reality is, you end up with two full-blown budget debates; one in the fall and one in the winter.
The inordinate and amazing amount of work that goes into preparation of the budget by the civil service is really mind-boggling. What, in fact, happens is that the civil service, for the weeks going into two budget sessions, essentially, is dedicated to just that and they're not free to deal with a lot of issues in the depth they probably should. I definitely think the time has come to weigh the pros and cons of what you achieve with a fall budget and what the de facto results of having a fall budget means, as far as workload. I definitely think, at the very least, it's time to review that to see if the decision that made sense four years ago continues to make sense.
I do want to say that in the next four years, this particular central agency, the Financial Management Board, the Finance Minister and chairman, are going to have an extremely difficult job. What we've seen in our system of government, not just this government but the system of government that has evolved in the territories, is that in our consensus system, the chair of the Financial Management Board doesn't have all of the institutional tools he or she needs to exact discipline on the Cabinet, though I think this Minister has done a very, very good job with the limited tools available to him to keep the Cabinet on the fiscal straight-and-narrow, and to accomplish what he's accomplished. I think he, the secretary, and their staff deserve a lot of credit.
But, I also think, that in the transitional period, I hope the Minister of Finance and chairman of the Financial Management Board will make some recommendations in the transitional document that will be going to the next government as to how the next chair and next Finance Minister will have more mechanisms to ensure that the government is fiscally responsible.
Now I know Mr. Pollard uses his wit, his intelligence and patience to talk Ministers into not spending and every technique known to Finance Ministers to achieve results, but it is very, very difficult. And, again, a reality of our system is that at the end of the day, the Finance Minister is, in many ways, accountable for those decisions because the Finance Minister is responsible for the budget. The same way that we lay a lot of accountability at the feet of the Premier and don't give the Premier all the tools necessary to do the job, that is also true with the Finance Minister.
I would just like to conclude, Mr. Chairman, I think the Finance Minister has done a good job. The recommendations we made were made with a lot of thought, and we hope they are constructive. I hope that the Finance Minister will use the wisdom of his four years of experience to prepare the next Finance Minister for the even more difficult job that it will be a year from now. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.