Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to thank the Members for making it possible to conclude our session here with these motions being proposed. Mr. Speaker, I obviously speak in favour of this motion. It is really disheartening, Mr. Speaker, for a returning Member like myself to have to go through what we have gone through in the last two weeks. We like to think that what we say here matters and that what we fight about is remembered, but for some reason, after we have gone through all that we went through with regard to the North Slave Correctional Centre for what seemed like forever in the last Assembly and all of the review that we went through in the last Assembly, we are right back to square one.
Mr. Speaker, governments have policies, laws and roles, and that's one of the main things we do in this House and there are reasons for that. It sets a direction. It sets out direction and intention of the government and those policies are made based on the questions of public interest, public desire and things the government wants to achieve. I believe if we have government policies and if we have any respect at all, we should be following those.
Mr. Speaker, I understand -- the Premiers have said it many times -- the government has a prerogative to exempt themselves from certain policies. I might agree with that but, Mr. Speaker, that has to be an exception and an exception with justification. Governments cannot be allowed to willy-nilly wake up one morning and say for this project we are going to exempt this and for that
project we will stick with this. Mr. Speaker, not only should they provide justification, but it should have good information. Everything I have heard in this House suggests to me that Cabinet has made these decisions on the basis of less than full information. Mr. Speaker, I do really hope the government will take to heart the content of this motion and the desire on the part of the Members on this side of the floor to speak to the Cabinet about the need to do this and what this motion is trying to achieve. In doing their cost-benefit analysis, I do hope the Ministers and Cabinet will not only just take into consideration how cheap they are going to get something if they bought it at cost in Edmonton, Las Vegas or anywhere. I can tell you, I am sure we can buy a lot of things cheaper down south but there are lots of other things that must be taken into consideration. Government has a role to be an example.
Like I stated earlier in the House, Mr. Speaker, I have gotten lots of phone calls from businesses and they say in government exempting themselves from this policy, why does the government expect the businesses to run at a loss? They have to be able to recover their cost of buying lumber in the North, hiring people in the North and paying a higher cost. That has to be factored in and analyzed against the benefits these businesses provide in terms of doing the work, paying the taxes, hiring northern labour, training our northern labour and providing constant service whether it's building houses, building buildings or providing furniture, computer services, the list goes on and on.
Mr. Speaker, what has been lacking and what has been the most troublesome about what we are going through here about the government willy-nilly exempting themselves from policy is what Mr. Braden has already stated. That is the lack of stability and predictability that businesses have to deal with, because they never know from one minute to the next whether projects the government does would have BIP on it or not.
Mr. Speaker, Don Worrall, executive director of the NWT Construction Association, was on CBC and he asked a question of whether or not he should use the BIP or scrap it. The consensus of the businesses is you either have it, you use it or you scrap it. Don't apply it to one project and not another. Mr. Speaker, Mr. Worrall stated: "As businesspeople, they would recognize that arbitrarily and periodically abandoning your own policy just leads to uncertainty among investors and if you are trying to attract businesses here to set up shop or expand and create jobs, you do not want to be fostering uncertainty in the investment environment."
I believe that states the opinion of many business leaders, Mr. Speaker. If we are going to do business here, we need to know what the business environment is. If businesses want to make long-term commitments and invest in their plans, their shops, in training their labour and expanding, they need to know that they can rely on the word of the government and the policy.
Mr. Speaker, another thing that's really disturbing about what we are dealing with, and I know this policy speaks to the general spirit and intent of the policy, but I think a very important part of this is the role and importance that the Cabinet Members on that side place on the Members on this side. Mr. Speaker, we have a consensus government and consensus government may mean a lot of things, but one of the most important things I consider that is important is that we don't have party politics where government comes into power and they set up their own agenda with opposition Members attacking the government from lists one to 10. I would like to think that as a consensus government that we are equal Members in this House and if there is going to be an exemption of government policy, because it has to be justified, but anything that has implications, we should have a say in that. We should not have to line up with everybody else and get a press release or learn what government is doing from a tender contract.
Mr. Speaker, I believe that this motion is telling Cabinet that we expect to be counted. We expect to be consulted. Where there is an exemption of a policy like BIP, we expect to see the cost-benefit analysis. It should be completely embarrassing on the part of the government and all the number crunchers in that apparatus of the government and all the Ministers who sat around and made this decision to exempt themselves from the policy, that they have not done a comprehensive cost and benefit analysis. I think all they have to do is listen to the people, listen to the businesses, think about what they heard and understand that there are many factors that have to go into calculating benefits and cost than just simply figuring out how cheap whatever it is they are buying or building will be.
Mr. Speaker, I believe there is an imbedded understanding in this legislature. We understand, appreciate and accept the need for sole-source contracts, negotiated contracts. They are practiced in many places. I remember the government defending to the teeth that we had to do sole-source contracts on fire suppression. That is $20 million. The contract was only for two years, it was renewed for five. At that time, we were convinced of the merits because it's in our interest to protect our industry. It's in the interest to make sure that $20 million doesn't fly south of 60, that all the training and all the investment on that project is worth keeping and that government is willing to pay the premium because in the end we don't pay the premium. That is the biggest misnomer that we have to dismiss right here and right now; that BIP costs money. It's only if you are counting dollars and cents how much cheaper you can get in raw numbers would you say that that costs money. Only if you are not taking into consideration what you get from taxation, from job creation and all the contributions that businesses and people make, then you would come to that false conclusion that the BIP costs money. The government has entered into a contract with the Gwich'in Tribal Council and we understand that that work will go to the Gwich'in government. We understand that and we accept that. So why is it that something like this comes up and we say we are going to get rid of that because we could get it for $10,000 cheaper? I don't think we should continue to tolerate the complete lack of respect for the businesses and for the Members in this House, in the way the Cabinet make their decisions, Mr. Speaker. If they are going to not follow the norm and exempt themselves, I expect more information, justification and understanding than what they have shown so far.
Mr. Speaker, I don't think there is anybody out there who doesn't understand where I stand on this. I hope I don't have to speak about this so much again. I think the Cabinet gets the point. I hope the Minister and Cabinet and the government would take the full understanding of this motion and in calculating their cost-benefit analysis,
that they do a comprehensive cost-benefit analysis and not just how much an extra five or 10 percent might cost.
With that, Mr. Speaker, I am happy to be supporting this motion and I thank the Members and this House for the opportunity to end this session by addressing this important issue. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.