Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We do have an interesting system of government here in the Northwest Territories. It is very interesting today that we seem to have dueling replies to the opening address, which lends to the uniqueness of our government.
It goes to say that even when you have a Finance Minister who can reply to an opening address, which is again very unique, that is something we should accept and every Member in this House has the opportunity to speak to the government's plans. It is interesting, Mr. Speaker, when it comes to the democracy side of our institution here in the Northwest Territories that when, as we heard Mr. Bell say, "consensus when it is convenient" because when it comes to critical votes, we seem to have a locking of positions, right or wrong on this issue, we are going to do this way, and we are going to convince a couple of other Members to do that and we will happily roll along.
Mr. Speaker, we have heard information from this side of the House from Regular Members more times than not through the media. I believe coming down here for this session, hearing something about a $60 million deficit. So again, Mr. Speaker, when the Power Corporation board was removed, it was through the media that many of us Members found out.
I just so happened to be reading my e-mail on the computer and reading the transcripts of the previous nights news and I get a phone call from a reporter saying, "What do you think about the removal of the Power Corporation?" or the direction to withdraw. I am sitting in Inuvik thinking, what are you talking about? I am not sure of this, I am just reading some news now and I have some concerns with the stepping in of Cabinet.
Mr. Speaker, unfortunately we do seem to have a theme here that is of concern to a lot of Members. It is of concern to Cabinet I am sure when we seem to be going all over the place and nobody is paddling in the same direction.
Mr. Speaker, I have said in this House before that I would gladly pat the back of the Premier and others if at times they told me what we were up to and I might be able to help paddle the boat in the same direction. It is not until we are heading down Niagara Falls, it seems, that all of a sudden the cry out for help comes out. Paddle the other way! We are going the wrong way! Stroke!
Mr. Speaker, this is a concern to me as a Member that has come from the 13th Assembly to see what we have been through, and in this Assembly to see what we are going through now. We have been through a number of these and unfortunately it seems, I do not know if ourselves have taken lightly the environment that we operate under. If in fact what we are doing here is for the better good of the people of the Northwest Territories. Is it truly the situation that we are doing that?
There are times when things get heated that we become quite animated here in pursuing a particular situation and I am as guilty as everyone else when it comes to those situations. There are times when emotions get the best of me and even though I want to paddle in the same direction we are going in a circle. It might mirror again the floor of this House. Even when we seem to be working together, some of us end up back in the same place wondering how come we are back in the same place, we have not made any further distance.
Mr. Speaker, there have been many things that I have grown concerned about in this Assembly, whether it is housing concerns, programs for seniors, whether it is income support for single parents or whether it is government accountability. We do have a system. A system in place that is recognized as unique across Canada. We have only one other jurisdiction that has followed our system and that is in Nunavut. They have just started out. They have not had a call for non-confidence yet, not that I have paid particular attention to that, but unfortunately, we have had, and seem to continue to run into that problem here.
Again, the unique part of this, Mr. Speaker, is the ability that we have as Members of this House to be able to raise specific constituency issues without having to run it through a party whip to say this is my concern. Can I address it today? Can I have one of the ten questions that we will have today to address this issue for my constituency? That is not necessary in our form. We are recognized and we are all given the opportunity to be able to address those concerns from our constituency.
I am one that is very happy. When I travelled to other jurisdictions and met with other parliamentarians and we discuss the systems we are in, I have a lot of other parliamentarians from across Canada saying "You know, that is a pretty good system. We should have something like that" because they feel they do not have the ability to address the party that is holding office, because it is clearly a majority position and if they do not like what is happening, they will just move on and get on with business and all that is left for the official opposition, so to speak, in provinces is to make a lot of noise and be very aggressive.
I have watched our colleagues from the Yukon and their system. A small Assembly and a small territory. I must say, I am very glad we do not operate like that. We have a good system of government.
Yes, sometimes that brings to bear difficulties, because we, as Regular Members, when we have a feeling on this side of the House that something is not right, we can address it with our government, and we can push them to be accountable. When they do not want to give all the information, we, as long as we have the majority of Members of this House, we can put a motion out and we can have the issue addressed, as we have just had with the special audit done by the Auditor General.
Again, that goes to show that we, as Members of this Assembly, can hold ourselves accountable. That is the beauty of the system, to a certain degree, and it is also almost a curse on itself is that we are to hold ourselves accountable.
If we, as the Members of this Assembly have taken an oath to the people of the Northwest Territories, cannot follow our own rules or will not stand up and recognize the fact that our rules were broken and take the next step, then we have a problem. Then the system starts to fall in on itself. But, if we are people who can manage to speak well in this House, we can deflect quite well as well. We can change the subject. We can move to another issue and not deal with the fundamental issue.
As I said earlier, Mr. Speaker, I have concerns that in some places, not only in the Northwest Territories but in Canada now, there are reports of the consensus style of government is being debated. Well, I guess we are now, to a certain degree. I must say, as I first listened to the broadcast, I was thinking I have to say something about this, and I backed off and said no, because if I do, that might just increase the discussion that is taking place. But I do not hear anybody in this House saying change our style of government, not clearly.
I have heard people say review what we are doing. The ultimate review happens, Mr. Speaker, when we all go back for election. If the people of the Northwest Territories do not like the system we are in, then it can be an issue. It can be an issue from their constituencies. It was raised to a certain degree during the election of this Assembly, but it was not a concern for the rest of the Northwest Territories. That is why we are still in this system.
I would have great fear, Mr. Speaker, if we fall into a political system, we will definitely be have's and have not's in certain areas in the Northwest Territories, because the party that can run the best campaign will put most people in, and where will that be located? Well, it is just natural that it fit in the larger centres in the Northwest Territories, because the ability to convince voters en masse takes place when you can get to their doors, in their TVs, on the radios, and knock on their doors.
Mr. Speaker, that is something that we must look at and hold unique in the Northwest Territories. We have to hold this style of government and continue to work with it. And yes, there will be times when government credibility will be called on. Yes, there will be times when we will have heated debate with one another as to the merits of our concern raised for the day. And yes, we will be told to get off of it and get on another issue because this is personal and petty.
Well, I think you will find that in the party form of government, as I have watched our federal government on TV and see how they go about things. It looks like that is all it is, about personalities, as to who can get the biggest bite and who can make the biggest noise.
I think we have accomplished things here around this table, and it is not without difficulty, without a bit of pain. But it is important that we recognize in this style of government that we are independents here. We can vote based on our independence of those people who put us here. That is why it is also a concern to me, Mr. Speaker, that when we come to certain decisions in this House, we also operate by what we hear as convention, and again, that is similar to a partisan system, but here in the Northwest Territories, we work by convention on a certain number of issues. One of the things is when a committee makes a report, a recommendation to government, convention usually says that the Cabinet will sit on their hands and let the Regular Members decide. Judging from that, they will decide if they in fact want to move on the recommendation or if they just feel that it is not important enough, they can put it aside. That is their prerogative, and we accept that on this side of the House.
Mr. Speaker, it is of concern to me that when it is convenient, they say no, this time it is an important matter. We are going to vote this way. The optics changes quite a bit.
It has already been reported that a previous motion, a committee recommendation, let's put it clearly, a committee recommendation was defeated on the calling for the Premier's resignation, and yes, it was done so. But I almost point out to people that this time around, the numbers have grown and the concern remains.
So while we discuss what we are doing here in the Northwest Territories, where we want to go, potentially, there is another year in our term. Let's see where Members go, but Members will have an opportunity to speak to where they want to go in a few minutes.
I look forward to hearing what some of the Members will say, unless they have been given the word to say mum and nothing else. I would encourage Members to speak about the motion that will come up later. I think it is critical of us as a government to hold things in a way that would be credible to the Northwest Territories and the people of the Northwest Territories, that they would get all sides of the story, that they would see what has been done and they would understand that when you come to this table, we are not just going to the coffee shop to discuss a few issues and we can change our mind automatically. There has to be some discussion and debate about how government flows and where it moves.
I heard the other day a reference to the Javaroma Tribal Council. Is that what we are becoming here in the Northwest Territories, that level? Well, maybe to a certain degree, we do and we will have to wear that.
Mr. Speaker, it is times like this when we look at ourselves, we look at the work we are getting done, and we have to decide, are we making progress? I recall the first days of this government. When we got into office, we were concerned about the debt wall, something I really stood up and questioned much about in this House. We were very fortunate that we got one-time investments, as we were told.
I heard the other day in the House the Finance Minister talked about our good investment practices. Mr. Speaker, when we started to begin with, I believe the Finance Minister started out as well saying that we started out, we were looking at a debt wall that was months away, so obviously we had no money to invest. It came to us. Not because of good planning but because of luck, as we have heard.
Now, if the Finance Minister has that ability to turn luck around and steer it directly towards us, let's hope that he is got one more thing in his bag of miracles, I guess we could say, because we are all of a sudden being told once again we are facing a serious situation. We have one more year in our mandate. The answers that echoed in this forum a couple of years back, well, we have a few months we think the federal government will be able to come to us and they will give us some dollars, they will provide us the necessary funds to be able to continue offering programs and services.
I believe the first discussion, it was a matter of months. Then as the next session came around I asked the question again about where are we now with our fiscal situation. What was I told? Well, it is no longer a number of months, it could be six months, maybe a year off.
Well the last answer when asking the question about where is the money for our proposals that were out there, I think the last response we had was, not in the life of this Assembly.
The NRRD Strategy it was called, Non-Renewable Resource Development Strategy. $230 million, we were working hard to have the federal government recognize the need for that and we could move ahead. What happened to that? Well, it is collecting dust someplace, somebody using it as a door stop or a fan or something, because we have not got it. You got one downpayment as we were told in this Assembly.
Now we went back and we started working on another proposal to the federal government because we were told by the federal government, here is another plan that we are working on, we can get this. We can get this money and we can make a difference, but put your proposal in and we will see what we can do. Maybe this one, I do not know, the trend has been going zero down, no payments for a year. Maybe that is the plan we are working on.
We do not have any more dollars from that as far as I am aware. That might be it. I just heard a colleague tell me maybe the plan fits under the "no payments until 2004." That could be it. Maybe we have fallen into that category.
Mr. Speaker, we do not have something we can show the people of the Territories for all the effort we have been told about going to the federal government. So when I hear Members in this House say, "Hang on people, do not overreact here, do not throw the baby out with the bath water so to speak," there is some hope yet. We are doing so much work with the federal government that we can make a difference. Well, the proof is in the pudding, and we have no pudding. I am afraid we are running out of time and somebody is going to come take the pot we had to cook in it.
Yet we can stand up and say, hang on, we can make this work. It can happen. Mr. Speaker, I can probably find ways of continuing this song and try to break a record or something in this House. I will save that. I think this has just got me warmed up for my next job that I have here today, which is seeing where Members of this Assembly stand on credibility as the Government of the Northwest Territories. Are we willing to put people first or are we going to stand here and stand for ourselves because we are worried about 12 months of pay or a pension? Opportunity knocks and that is what we have here. We have an opportunity to restore credibility to the Government of the Northwest Territories. With that I will close. Mr. Speaker.