Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, we have had the opportunity to hear some of the plans that are put forward in the 14th Assembly by the Finance Minister and his colleagues. We have, as Members of the 14th Assembly, worked together on the document called Towards a Better Tomorrow. There have been many comments made during committee review of the departments to-date. There will be more as we go through it. Unfortunately, we have not had a chance to go through the whole thing before we could do this, but with the information available, I would like to make a few comments.
Mr. Speaker, we have heard many positive messages being sent out to the people of the Territories, to the businesses of the Territories, and the businesses in the southern jurisdictions. Now I understand the need for the positive message to build on the business opportunities of the Northwest Territories. However, Mr. Speaker, I think we need to put a touch of reality into our good news message we are trying to get out there.
Mr. Speaker, in the Finance Minister's Budget Address, he speaks of the substantial development that is out there, and he says we are on the brink of substantial development. In fact, that may be the only light on the horizon, Mr. Speaker. Right now, besides some shuffling of the deck, as they say, and redoing of the numbers, we still have a deficit budget. Although in his budget, he talks about a $12.3 million deficit, when we take all the numbers together, in fact we are at a cash deficit of $28.5 million at the end of this fiscal year. That is including a $43 million increase in the taxation.
Mr. Speaker, what are we going to do the next fiscal year, when these one time funding amounts are no longer there for residents of the Northwest Territories?
Now, I am not saying we should have come in as a 14th Assembly and do what was done in the previous Assembly. As a Member of the 13th Assembly, I was not happy to go back to my constituents to tell them of more reductions. At the same time, I was not prepared to saddle the future generation with a debt of today's government. If this picture does not brighten on the horizon, we will indeed find ourselves as a government looking to more reductions.
I was hoping that in the time we have had together, we would be looking at changing the way government does business, not necessarily reductions for the sake of reductions or meeting targets. We have seen that. We have seen that in capital. We have seen that in job reductions of the people that we had under our employment, but we have not seen that in the red tape. Today, the duties and responsibilities for employees are still there. We just have less employees to do the work. Work that was done by two people is now done by one.
Mr. Speaker, if we are going to do something, we have to look at ourselves in the mirror and say are we doing the right things? Now, I am not saying that we go back and look at strategies, because that does not work. I, myself, Mr. Speaker, have spoken in the previous Assembly against doing more strategies, and more plans and updates because there have been many of those done before. It is time to put things into action.
Mr. Speaker, on page 7 of the budget speech, we talk about investment in early childhood development. We talked about the Healthy Children's Initiative. We talked about a territorial agenda for children and youth, and an early childhood development action plan. We have talked about how we have called for the full restoration of the CHT funding. Mr. Speaker, all this tells me is that we are going to do more plans. I think yes, the Healthy Children's Initiative is a good one, and there is some good work that is coming out of there. Let's follow up on it.
You have heard about the territorial agenda for children and youth that is being developed. In response to my question earlier, the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment talked about working with his colleague from Health and Social Services on children and youth. Are we going to positively come out with some measurable results, or are we going to sit down in another year's time to talk about the further initiatives and action plans we need to develop?
It is time to quit developing these action plans and implement them. Let's aim for results. If we need to look at government structures as they exist today and say maybe we do not need as many departments, then that is something we have to seriously look at. We cannot continue to talk about government expenditures and we look out from government, and not look in.
Something I stand by is if we are going to lead, we have to lead by example. As a Member of the 13th Assembly, I chose to do that. The example, Mr. Speaker, I was one of the many Members who supported reducing the pensions of Members of the Legislative Assembly. One of the first things we did, as well, is we took a seven percent rollback in wages and benefits. That was leading by example. To date, Mr. Speaker, in this Assembly, we are leading with press releases. We are talking about how good it will be. My concern is we have put a lot of our eggs in one basket, that one basket being the federal government and royalty revenue sharing. Yes, I agree we need to pursue it. However, I am concerned we have put too much emphasis in one category in one area.
I believe that development will happen, Mr. Speaker, because the aboriginal groups are now ready to take on that development. As I heard when I was in Fort Liard from Chief Deneron, as he spoke to the people and to the guests that were there, he worked on an initiative for about ten years without the support of government. It was not until the last year, two years that this government was able to start helping out. Now that is not a good record.
We talked about trying to increase education of those so they can be employable. In fact Mr. Speaker, in the Delta next year, we are going to have great demand for people in the seismic area, and businesses are going to start building up once again. Are we ready? Are we investing? We have heard the Finance Minister say that we need to make investments. I agree. They need to be calculated investments. One of the areas I saw and have much disappointment on is knowing that the Aurora Campus facility in Inuvik, one of the first things this government did was pull that off on the capital plan side, just when we need to develop our infrastructure to try and take advantage of the situation we have. People will be hired and working by the time we get this facility up and going. They might help take it down, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, as government, we have heard it said, and I have said it myself as a previous Member, the government cannot be the engine of the economy. That leaves us in a really difficult situation, and I agree we need to at least supply the fuel. That is the assistance, when it comes to the aboriginal groups or to the private sector, as they look at developing businesses in the Northwest Territories.
We have already heard of the high cost of living in the Northwest Territories. Will we be able to stand up at the end of this term, or the end of this year in this budget and say to anybody in the Northwest Territories we have helped them to be able to sustain themselves in the communities? We have seen the price of fuel go up, gas, because of the cuts to the municipal communities, taxpayers in municipalities are probably going to see a tax increase. So it is not getting any cheaper to live in the Northwest Territories. What are we going to do about that, Mr. Speaker?
Well, I think we have to create an environment. How we might create an environment...unfortunately, it looks like the idea of taxes is being bounced around. We need to do more consultation with our communities. Those are the ones that are going to be doing this and explain it to them how it will either benefit them or how they will pay. I have yet to see a government introduce a tax that is tax neutral or revenue neutral. There is always a gain for government. Knowing our situation with revenues it is hard not to agree with some form of increase in revenues, and whether it be in taxes one way or another, because we just cannot afford to do what we are doing.
One of the first things we did in the 14th Assembly is we gave an increase to teachers and to support staff in the school. Yes, it is a critical area to invest, but as I said earlier to the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment, is there in fact going to be something we can measure at the end of this, or is this just money on top of other money? What are our outcomes? We have heard about the graduation rates. We have heard about the quality of education. Are we setting goals to correct those, Mr. Speaker?
Now not to be totally negative, Mr. Speaker. I have to give some credit to the Finance Minister for continuing to trudge on and give the good message and go to Ottawa and say we have to have control of northern resources in the Northwest Territories. Nobody here would deny that we need to do that, but I also encourage my colleague across the floor that he needs to spread out a little bit of the planning, plan B if this does not come forward.
Previously to the budget being tabled in this House, the Finance Minister replied to me saying that in fact we had a ten month window before we hit the debt wall, our borrowing limit. He came back and responded to my colleague, Mr. Dent, and said in fact now we have 18 months to two years before this happens. It was interesting to see that $35 million dropped out of Nunavut's basket into ours to help this one-time situation. He did not hear anything about it beforehand. We had this one-time increase in corporate taxes, which hopefully will not be totally gone in the future years, especially as we see development happening in the Northwest Territories. So how are we going to take advantage of some of the situations that are there? Whether it comes to increasing corporate taxes, not by increasing percentages, but increasing opportunities and building on business in the Northwest Territories.
The Business Incentive Policy talks about helping establish businesses in the Northwest Territories. The fact is, companies from southern jurisdictions can still do work in the Northwest Territories and beat business in the Northwest Territories, although not as badly as they used to, we must admit. Our companies have fought hard and well to establish themselves in the Northwest Territories and compete. However, it is not without some form of subsidy, whether it is front end or back end that we have to put in place to keep the businesses surviving.
Where do we go from here? Do we continue these, even though we can really measure the results of those, like the Business Incentive Policy? Are we going to do another study? I believe that I have heard that mentioned a couple of times. We have to look at it again. How many studies have been done and nothing comes out of them? If we do not intend to change anything, lets not study it, Mr. Speaker. That comes not only from Business Incentive Policies, it comes from any policy within the Government of the Northwest Territories. If in fact the decision is already made that we are not going to change things, then do not study it. I believe that we can find somewhere in the area of hundreds of thousands, probably millions of dollars in the area of studies and plans and evaluations. So I would say that if you do not plan to change it, do not study it.
We have heard from the people of the Northwest Territories that this government does not function properly and does things that are high cost, ineffective, and duplicate. We have some of our own examples. Our first response is yes, we agree with that and we need to put a plan together and strategize how we are going to do this.
Unfortunately, our time is running short, Mr. Speaker. Can we strategize even more? Can we take a year to put another plan together? Hopefully the Minister has had some time and his staff, who have been running ragged, as we hear, have had some opportunity to put plan B together or start to structure a plan B. Because, Mr. Speaker, I will not be very happy when it comes to the second budget of the 14th Assembly and find out that I have to bring more bad news to my community and that things are not proceeding as they were planned.
Accountability, Mr. Speaker, is something we are going to see come up time and time again in this Assembly. Because that was one of the key features of this 14th Assembly and it will continue to be, until we are done in our time here. How will we be accountable to the people of the Northwest Territories? Not only does this Cabinet need to be accountable to this Assembly here, but in fact, we are all accountable to the people in the Northwest Territories for our decisions. How are we going to measure accountability?
We have heard in this House the shifting that can happen from one department to another. It goes back to having rules in place, having areas where we can say that there is a structure that is solidly enough in place that if somebody goes outside of those lines, they will be called up on their activities and they will be held accountable for those activities.
We have heard some news come from the other side of the floor in some of the questions about accountability, about how there seems to be a lack of measurements in there when it comes to our Ministers and deputies. I know that at the end of the day, the Minister is accountable for his department and the action of his department. That is the way I see it.
During our time going through this, we have heard questions and we will continue to hear questions about how Ministers will hold their staff accountable. It is no good, Mr. Speaker, to give me a document, give me something that I can read and read to my constituencies and not have something measurable after the time period.
We know that we cannot change the results of education overnight. We cannot change the business atmosphere in the Northwest Territories overnight. But I think that if people notice that we are doing the best we can and we are giving them the goods up front, straight forward, that they will be able to buy into us, and buy into the story that the Northwest Territories is a place we can invest in and we can achieve positive results. It is no good to put a story line down and before you close the book, it all falls apart because you could not bind it together, because it was all on one story line and the story fell short.
At the end of the day before you could say they lived happily ever after, the author came along and said it is time for a rewrite. Being the federal government, Mr. Speaker, ultimately, they hold the big hammer. We do not even hold a comparable stick to fend off the actions. We have heard much positive news, and I hope and pray that the work this government is doing in Ottawa will benefit the people of the Northwest Territories so we will see positive results. Mr. Speaker, come the second budget of the 14th Assembly, if we have not achieved measurable results on what has been put forward, I guarantee the Minister of Finance, I will be in his face. Thank you.