Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I guess as the Government House Leader said we are into dueling replies on consensus government. Right off the bat, Mr. Speaker, I would like to say I much prefer consensus government over the alternative. I know it can be frustrating at times and I think we have heard some of that here today. I think that that frustration grows largely because communications is not consistent between government and Regular Members. Regular Members really do want to be involved, but they want to know that what they say is being heard.
We want to feel that we can debate meaningful issues. In this system, in the consensus system, Members are given a big role in budgets compared to what is found in other jurisdictions. Nowhere else in Canada do you find Regular Members able to influence what a final budget looks like because they were given six months in advance of seeing it the business plan where they can review it, make suggestions and effect change within how that budget is brought forward. That is a very important part of what a Regular Member's role is, so we need to know that the government is always going to be listening to our comments.
One of the basic tenants that makes that system work is that we are given the information in confidence in our committees. That is also something that does not happen in other jurisdictions. When you have a party system and you have members of other parties and committees, you cannot be given a lot of the information that the government would normally hold close to its chest.
Because we have that information, we can become meaningful partners in the decision-making process. We have more of the information provided to us. When things do not move along quickly enough, we are only given part of the picture, when we only get it some of the time, frustrations can build.
That is what I think I heard today with much of what seems to have gotten us going here was when Mr. Bell made his comments. It was not some time ago that Members in committee heard that the government deficit had grown from what we were presented in the budget speech this year, that it was now approaching $60 million. All the Members on this side kept that in confidence. The Minister and the government were given time to work out a plan of action so that they could come back to the committee. That information was not leaked by this side of the House to the press.
I was surprised, Mr. Speaker, to receive a phone call about three or four weeks ago from a member of the press saying that Mr. Handley had told him now that that is what had happened. So there was no big public talk, but somehow the Minister favoured one member of the press and gave that information out. Then we started getting phone calls on this side of the House.
Either we have to respect that confidence, all of us, or do not expect the rest of us to give the time that the government has to work with that confidence.
Right now we have heard that the deficit has grown again. As I have pointed out, Mr. Speaker, the government has had an opportunity to develop some plans, because the committee heard quite some time ago now that the deficit was effecting to be quite a bit higher than had been projected.
We have not heard that. We are told that tomorrow, the last day scheduled for sitting, is when we are going to get it. That does not give us enough time to take what the government's position is going to be, what they are going to recommend as a possible course of action, and then have a meaningful debate that the public can hear and understand in this House.
It is frustrating for us because we did not get to it sooner. I think that it is important too that one of the undercurrents that I thought I heard from Minister Handley when he was speaking in his reply was that the government wants to work with the committee and wants to make sure that it has gone through things with the committee before going to the public.
It is important to remember that the government still has to take the lead on a lot of these issues. They have to provide the committee with, what are the options they are looking at? Why? None of us on this side of the House have the resources that they can call on. I cannot go to a department and ask them to prepare the options or different courses of action. I, like most of the Members here, have only a part-time assistant. We cannot be expected to develop the papers that say, here are what some of the possibilities are and here are the implications. We need that sort of leadership to come from the government and it has to come in a timely basis.
A couple of days ago when we were debating the committee report, the Government House Leader said that we should be talking about more important things. He mentioned that kids were sleeping in the cold and other pressing social conditions. Mr. Speaker, it is only today that we are going to have the GNWT response to the social agenda report tabled. Why did we not get that tabled early in the session so we could talk about it? Why did we not get the recruitment and retention plan tabled early in the session, so we could talk about how we are going to deal with our shortage of health care people and personnel in the Northwest Territories? Why did we not get something tabled so we could talk about education and the shortfalls that we have there, the important needs of kids with special needs that we are not dealing with adequately?
The government has to make sure that they can bring those things forward for us to discuss. It is their role as the leaders in this system to present to committee the options for us to get on the table so that we can have these meaningful discussions. The Members on this side do not have the resources or the ability to prepare the discussion papers that could be tabled for us to talk about in committee of the whole. We cannot prepare different positions, or the legislation that we might need to get on. That is where some of this frustration is coming from. The consensus system can work but communication has to be two-way.
Members on this side of the House have to be heard. Members on the government side have to be willing to listen to the advice that we give, and they have to be willing to bring forward the important issues that all of the people in the North want to hear us talking about, because it is up to them to put the discussion papers forward for us to discuss. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.