Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The wish of the committee today is to deal with the sessional statement in Committee of the Whole today. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Does the committee concur?

Agreed. I would like to ask the Premier if he would like to bring in witnesses.

No, Mr. Chairman.

With that, we will take a short break.

---SHORT RECESS

I will call Committee of the Whole back to order. We will begin with the sessional statement. General comments. Mr. Bromley.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I would like to respond to the Premier’s sessional statement and I would like to start by building a strong foundation and hitting some common ground.

First of all, there were main points that I strongly agree with, but the first one I would like to touch on is a sustainable future means looking far beyond a four-year horizon, and that’s repeated later in the statement. I would like to challenge all Members here, all Members of the House, do we have the far-sightedness that this requires.

The second point I would like to emphasize is working together. That’s something all the elders I have worked with over the years have emphasized. I am slowly becoming one myself and so I find myself emphasizing that really critical element. We do need to work together. I think there’s a proven track record of great accomplishment when we do.

As a third point -- I am skipping to page 4 of the address -- to me, a very key question is where can we have the greatest impact, not just after the next four years, but over the longer term of our future. To me, it’s partly how. The actions that support all our goals, especially at reduced cost, are the ones we want to be investing in. My theme this morning is supporting local business. Using local business or supporting local business that uses local resources will give us big, big returns for our local economies and our territorial economy.

Education really from the bottom up, early childhood education, childcare and housing, these sorts of things are always place-based. In other words, in a way that engages us in our communities and imbeds us in the land we live on.

Also another how there is shifting subsidies from some of the things that are clearly bad for our economy and bad from the environment to those things that are good. I have lots of suggestions I would be happy to chat with you about at some point.

Again, a very important statement, we need to improve the effectiveness by recognizing connections; connections between individual decisions and programs, health and education, economic development and environmental impacts and really between all of those. That’s something that I have seen missing. This is a core that has driven me into politics. It is trying to make and emphasize those connections. More on that later.

Again, development must continue to be undertaken in an environmentally sustainable manner. I take great

exception to that. This is not a common area for us. A lot of our development has clearly not been environmentally sustainable. We don’t have to go beyond the city limits for that. To me, the greatest issue we have is climate change and we are well on our way to tripling our greenhouse gas emissions from the 1990 level to the time we fully recognized that we need to be reducing those by 50 to 80 percent within the next couple or three decades. So, sadly, that’s not a point that I can agree on.

There are many points there, as I was saying, that I do support. I like what I heard and I would like to focus on some of the things that will help us at looking beyond this four-year horizon. To me, the first thing is a policy lens, passing all of our actions, all of our policies, reviewing all of our legislation through this policy lens that looks at the action or policy contribute to net benefits in all three components of sustainability. Really, we want all three -- and that’s what sustainability is, a sustainable economy without other aspects of sustainability is not sustainable -- components of environmental, social and environmental sustainability and benefits must be part of every action and policy we take. It’s the failure to do that in the past that has led us to some of the big challenges and frustrations, Mr. Chair, that you expressed earlier of same old, same old. We need to do things differently. This lens can be huge in helping us do things differently.

Next I would like to mention climate change because it is so huge and pervasive for me. It pervades all of our policies and so on, all aspects of our lives. The incredible loss of permafrost that we are facing. We’ve seen nothing yet from what all the scientists say. Loss of 20 to 50 percent of our species, of our different kinds of animals and plants within a 20, 30 to 50-year time frame. The scientists are calling this ecosystem collapse. It’s when basically the system starts imploding. That’s a huge one for us. We’re so connected to the land in every way from the air we breathe to the water we drink and the food it provides, and still does. It’s not just the old way of life; we are totally connected and dependent on the land today.

Of course, change in water distribution and quality. The Minister of Environment and Natural Resources has talked about that. The loss of cultures. The ACIA, the Arctic Climate Impact and Adaptation study that was just done by the Arctic Council, an amazing study and basically predicts the complete loss of the Inuit culture within a generation or two. Mitigation and adaptation to climate change. Again, these are huge. The science is clear and unanimous. What will our commitment be to this? Again, we’re right there now. It’s act or be prepared for really, really significant impacts we don’t want to even consider at this point.

Economic diversification. This can add to our strength and our local economies, especially, I want to profile here the arts. Investment in the arts such as the Yukon is doing can really give us big returns. It can help with keeping professionals, retaining professionals that we need to retain, as well as adding to the depth and quality of life and cost of living even in our communities. I mentioned before the two aspects of more and better to our economy. I think we’re doing well on the more front, although, as I’ve mentioned, it’s precarious. It’s now time to focus on better. How can we diversify it? How can we make sure it responds to our values?

One thing that is of great concern to me is fuel costs. The Northwest Territories is so dependent on fossil fuels right

now and becoming increasingly so as we become more mechanized and so on. We want to build more highways and on it goes. We want more flights in and out. We know what’s happening with the cost of fuel; it’s tripled, probably, in the last five years; certainly doubled in the last couple of years. We need to have that be a…(inaudible)…Everything we do we should really consider what the fuel costs are and alternatives and efficiencies and opportunities for conservation of energy there.

Finally, and another strong point of agreement and support for me is focusing on prevention. I really like that aspect of the address, especially for me it’s the social and environmental issues. There are so many things we can do that will be win, win, win for us. Getting at the root causes of our health problems, social problems and environmental problems can really contribute in many ways, as well, to a strong and sustainable economy.

I’d like to emphasize here adequate, available and affordable housing, including resolution of land issues. I mentioned before childcare and early childhood education; well demonstrated to be effective and a good investment. Implementing the Literacy Program including enhanced adult literacy and basic education in small communities. Finally, of course, the place-based education throughout our learning systems where our learning is from early childhood through continued learning as adults is based on our land and in our communities and cultures.

Finally, of course, I think -- sorry, this really is my final one -- the land claims, land use plans, leadership and coordination of government. I think there’s a real role, a real challenge for us, as our self-government negotiations come to conclusion. We really need to focus and develop our leadership role. It’s a challenge. There’s no map out there for us. We’re unique in Canada, clearly. Our challenges are huge but I think we’re a huge bunch of people with great skills, and with some focus we can provide some leadership there. That will include a discussion on how we will manage our lands and resources over time and so on in really new ways. I think we should be able to come up with new ways of doing that so we’re not generating a lot of the issues that the current federal system does. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and I will be pleased to hear others' comments.

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Mr. Premier, do you want to respond to some of the points?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I wasn’t intending to respond to comments. I’ll give all Members opportunity to speak towards this sessional statement, then maybe I can also speak at the end of that process. Thank you.

Okay. Does committee agree that’s the process we’ll use?

Next on my list I have Mrs. Groenewegen, MLA for Hay River South, then Mr. Ramsay. If anyone else would like to speak, just put your hand up. Mrs. Groenewegen.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The sessional statement is the first time we’ve had a bit of

chance to hear what the Premier’s vision is for the territory -- and the Cabinet’s vision, I would assume -- since Mr. Roland’s election as our new Premier for the 16th Assembly. I can’t help but be struck by the consistency with this statement starting off, as now being here for the fourth term, as the similarities that we come across from term to term to term. I guess one of the things that I would like to see…We’ve all come here to do a job and we want to make a difference and we talk about those aspirations, we put words to it and sometimes it’s just so broad and so vast; we have so many issues that we want to advance that sometimes it seems like we don’t really have a very viable quantifying what kind of success or what kind of in-roads or how much we’ve actually advanced this agenda. It’s difficult to measure. I think that maybe coming from the private sector where you make a decision and then pretty much you see the results of your decision, what will happen, you see the results pretty quickly. With the government it’s different, and we’re sort of a vast territory and we cover so many areas of responsibility that it’s easy to become discouraged in some ways, because we aren’t really able to gauge the difference that our actions and then our words and our energies are making.

I guess I’m a realist. I always like to look at some of these things that we say and some of these policies and try to project and visualize somebody, somewhere, some home, some family, some place, some community where you could actually see where we’ve taken things from where they are now to a better place, to a better level; where we’ve made decisions here that have had a direct impact on someone’s well-being, someone’s ability to take advantage of opportunities for someone’s ability to realize their potential. All those things that we talk about, but sometimes I just wish we had a better way to quantify and measure what we do.

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again, I think, as a government, we have many areas of responsibility which we have to be responsible for on an ongoing basis, but we also have many challenges. In looking at those challenges, we can become overwhelmed unless we take it one…If we just look at the mountain and don’t look at how we can address things one issue and one initiative and one step at a time, I think that we become unfocussed and I don’t want us to lose that optimism that we can make a difference. I don’t want to sound negative, but it’s really good when we can somehow measure, if we set a goal and say we want to see 10 percent reduction in the amount of alcohol consumed in the Northwest Territories in the next four years, and at the end of four years we can say, okay, that would be an indicator of something. You know, if we say we want to see 10 percent more graduates from secondary schools in the Northwest Territories in the next four years, and then at the end if we could have a report card at the end of our four-year term. If we could set out some of those things that we’d like to see at the beginning, put a quantity on them and then at the end of the four years we could give ourselves a report card and say, okay, the 16th Assembly of the Government

of the Northwest Territories saw that kind of progress. So in the days ahead I would like to see us try to put those kinds of targets in place, even if it’s only in four or five areas.

I’ve heard Mr. Bromley talk about the environment and reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. Why not set targets? Let’s not make them unrealistic, but let’s set

targets and then take concrete steps to realize those reductions. We have the authority; we have the mandate; we have the power to do things. It’s just a matter of us making those decisions. So I hope we aren’t going to be stuck in a rut of doing things the way we’ve always done them. I hope we can think with innovation and creativity and find some things, put some targets out there and realize some progress. I couldn’t list for you today, Mr. Chairman, all of what those things should be, but as we’ve had a chance to spend some time together I think we’ve been able to learn some of the common areas of interest that we have as Members elected to this House. Like I said, I think with everything that’s happening in the territory around us, there are a lot of other places we could be, but we have chosen to be here and that choice was supported by the people who elected and put us here and now four years will go by so quickly, but we have an opportunity to make a difference. That’s what’s important to me. I’m not here to warm a chair or just sit back and collect a paycheque or not make a difference. This is such a unique opportunity to serve the Northwest Territories at this level and sometimes we become even a little bit desensitized to that. We’re here all the day, we work, you know, we’re here every day, we work with other leaders, and it becomes kind of commonplace to us. But I think we need to always remind ourselves that this is such an unusual and extraordinary opportunity we have to affect the direction of the North and to affect the lives of and the environment, the things that are within our ability to change. We need to constantly remind ourselves of that and take that responsibility and that stewardship very, very seriously.

So I’m happy to be back here. I’m full of issues, ideas and energy from the intense dialogue we had with constituents in the month of September. Certainly the demands on our time and our resources are great, but I’m very confident that we can advance the agenda and I’m looking forward to the completion of a document that will set out the priorities of this government and then working with everyone, all 19 Members, to find ways to ensure that the 16th Assembly leaves a very positive mark on our territory.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. Next on my list I have Mr. Ramsay, then Ms. Bisaro. Mr. Ramsay.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to welcome you, Mr. Chairman, to your role as chair of Committee of the Whole. Speaking to the Premier’s sessional statement, I’ve got a number of areas that I wanted to cover. First and foremost, I’m very happy to be back here and happy to be back in my role as a Regular Member of this House. I’m also looking forward to my role as the chair of the Economic Development and Infrastructure committee and the role that I’ll play in hopefully steering the decisions of the government.

I think, for me, and a lot of folks have worked with me in the past, my style is I like to mix things up a little bit; I like to try to get things done. I’m not a guy that tolerates complacency very much. I think, you know, I’ve seen government operate for a while now and I think a lot of times it’s an issue of the old adage of the tail wagging the dog. I think early on in the mandate of this 16th Legislative

Assembly, I really think that the government has to grab the bureaucracy by the horns and start steering this ship. Four years goes by so fast and I think as a group, you know, I’m really full of positive energy, Mr. Chairman, in

the fact that I believe wholeheartedly that if we work together, we can achieve some very good things.

I’ve had discussions with my colleagues on this side of the House -- there are 11 of us here, and there are seven Cabinet Ministers across the way -- and we have a profound amount of power in this style of government and a profound influence on how things can and should happen. When Regular Members on this side of the House want to make things happen, we’re going to try our best to make things happen. I really believe strongly in that, Mr. Chairman; we have to be decisive. You know, I’m not interested in babysitting the government. We’re here to make decisions; we’re here to be leaders and I think it’s time to shake things up.

The morale in the public service is going down; it’s in the toilet. We have to rescue that. We have to show the public service that this is a government that’s not going to let them stifle under managers who won’t let them do anything, or managers who won’t let them do their jobs. Do you know why they don’t want to let them do their jobs? It’s because when they let them do their jobs, that means they might have to do something. That’s not the kind of government we should be operating here. It’s not the kind of government that should allow middle managers to become nothing more than contract administrators. We’ve got 5,500 employees. There are a number of them out there, Mr. Chairman, who are waiting anxiously for a government that is going to grab people and make them accountable. This is the government that can do that. We have all the power here, so let’s do that. Let’s empower people in the public service to do their jobs. You know, too many people telling people what to do. I really think that it has to start with us. That’s why I’m so excited about this zero-based review, positions, budgeting. Let’s start at ground zero.

In the Minister’s sessional statement he makes…“We have demonstrated we can govern responsibly and make good use of our resources.” Well, to me that’s a debatable statement. I don’t know if we’re making good use of our resources, because I don’t exactly know if every dollar we’re spending is being spent in an area where it should be spent. There are so many demands on our resources today that unless we go through an exercise like that, we won’t know where exactly the best bang for our dollar is. Everybody knows. Everybody’s got concerns: transportation infrastructure, public infrastructure, youth, there’s health and education. There are a number of issues that are out there that are pressing and urgent to our constituents. It’s important that we try to find resources somehow, someway, to address those main priorities. I think we can do that, Mr. Chairman.

I wanted to talk a little bit about devolution. In my mind, what I’ve seen are the losses just keep stacking up. The last government had a number of losses that keep piling up. I mean, we’ve got devolution and resource revenue so connected, intertwined and connected that I think we’re missing some big opportunities. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again today, that I believe we have to start hiving off areas where we can target and we can get wins. You look back -- transportation, health -- we got some wins. I mean, health is costing us a lot of money today but, you know, it’s our responsibility, Mr. Chairman. I believe oil and gas, mining, the environment, those are some things that maybe we should just start concentrating our efforts in certain areas. Oil and gas is perhaps the biggest one. I mean, we’re on the verge of a $10 billion pipeline down

the very spine of our territory and if we’re not out there negotiating specifically on that and getting responsibility, getting revenues for that, then we’re missing the boat because we’re just grouping everything together. I know I asked the Premier last year what he thought it cost the government to negotiate devolution over the years that we have been talking about this. It is probably a staggering amount, 25, 30, 40 million dollars. That is money that we will never get back. In my mind, I really believe we have to start targeting areas and going after them so that this government, the 16th Legislative Assembly, when we are

done, do you know what? We can look in the mirror and say, yes, we accomplished some things. If we keep looking at the big picture, I don’t know if we can get there. I just haven’t seen evidence that we are getting any traction there. So let’s get out there. Let’s get some winds so that, at the end of this government, we are not scrambling around looking for something to pin our name to or a legacy project and spending $165 million on a bridge, for example, because the loss has stacked up, because we didn’t have devolution, because we didn’t have resource revenue sharing. We need to get some wins. We need to get them early on, Mr. Chair.

The cost of living, too, is a big issue for many of my constituents and many other Members that I have talked to in their ridings. In part to the devolution negotiations, and I could never understand why it wasn’t part of the negotiations, but to try to get Ottawa to establish a permanent trust fund in the Northwest Territories based on revenues coming out of the oil and gas and you could include mining in that, as well. In the state of Alaska, they have a permanent trust fund and every year that permanent trust fund pays anywhere between $800 and $2,400 to every man, woman and child in the state of Alaska. There are 700,000 people in the State of Alaska. There are 44,000 here in the Northwest Territories. There is no way that we should just be sitting idly by watching our resources slip through our fingers with nothing to help future generations, my kids, my kids’ grandkids. We should be looking at setting up something like that. If you want to talk about a legacy, that would be something that I am sure this Premier and the government would love to have their name associated with the establishment of a trust fund. We shouldn’t give up on that.

Not being the Premier or being a Cabinet Minister, you are not party to all of the negotiations that are going on. You don’t get to see…You can tell the Premier, well, I really think you should pursue this, but, at the end of the day, you really don’t know how he is pursuing it or how the government is pursuing it. You just take it for granted that, well, I told them about it. Maybe they will do something. On this file, I really do believe we have to make some demands of the federal government to set this up.

The other issue, too, I never really fully understood why, if there is a dispute -- and obviously there is a dispute between the federal government and the Government of the Northwest Territories on resource royalties -- why would we not negotiate all of those royalties that are being paid to Ottawa go into a trust and are set aside until such a time as the political evolution of this territory is at such a state where groups and the Government of the Northwest Territories and other governments here can access those funds? I don’t understand why we wouldn’t be solely concentrating right in or zero in on that. Get our lawyers working on that. There is a dispute at play. There are

resource royalties that are being paid to the federal government coming out of the soil here in the Northwest Territories rightfully belonging to the citizens of the Northwest Territories and we should be demanding that the federal government put those aside until we have settled our differences. What is it going to hurt the federal government? They have a $14 billion surplus. Set it aside. We should be hammering on the desks saying that that should happen. And then you want to see a resolution to land claims? You want to believe it. Land claims would be resolved. There would be a pot of money that would be accruing every year. In order to get access to that, the governments would have to come up with some kind of agreement on cost sharing or revenue sharing and I believe that is the key to the future here is those resource royalties. We need to be going there. We need to be doing that.

I think that is probably about it, Mr. Chair. Again, I wanted to mention that I am very positive about the role that Members have in this government. I know we are new. We are just coming in here, the sessional statement. I know we are not fully through our strategic plan and our vision for the next four years, but I am excited about the opportunities that are out there. I am excited about our people. I am excited about the opportunity to work with my colleagues here, the new Cabinet, my colleagues on this side of the House. Let’s get at it and let’s get something done. Mahsi.

Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. At this time, I would like to recognize in the visitor’s gallery a former Member of the House, Mr. Roy Erasmus.

---Applause

Next on my list I have Ms. Bisaro, Member for Frame Lake.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I would like to thank the Premier for sharing his views and his vision in his sessional statement. At one point, he said that he believes that the 16th Assembly will be a turning point. I

have to say that I agree with the Premier. I see the next decade as vital to the progress of the NWT and it is a time when the NWT will need strong leadership. I think that this Assembly is well positioned to provide that leadership.

The Premier also said that if we make the right choices and if we act together, and I agree strongly with those statements as well. It is important for us to consider the views of all the residents of the NWT whenever we consider any action that we take. It is important that we act. We cannot continue to maintain the status quo. We need to go forward. It has been mentioned previously that this is an exciting time. I totally agree with that. I think that there are a lot of things that we can accomplish if we work together, if we continue to think outside the box, as the expression goes, and if we continue to take each other’s ideas and refine them to suit everybody within the territory.

The Premier spoke about protecting and preserving the environment. I agree with that statement, as well. I feel that we need to have considered and controlled development from both mining and from oil and gas sectors. I feel we need to reform our regulatory process. We will have to see whether or not Mr. McCrank can do that to the satisfaction of this particular Assembly. I have my doubts, but we will have to wait and see. As we have

development, we have to make sure that we establish protected areas prior to development; that we identify restrictions on development in and around the protected areas and that we do that before development occurs, not after development occurs. It is not going to do us any good if we do it after the fact. We have to be proactive in terms of protecting the environment, and I believe that my colleague has already stated that he feels every action we take must be made in consideration of the affect that it is going to have on our environment and on our climate. I would agree with that. We also need to make sure that we work to mitigate the effects that climate change is already reaping on our fragile territory.

In terms of devolution, the Premier mentioned that we need to manage, control and make decisions to govern resource development. We need to benefit from its revenue. Absolutely. I feel that we need to try to wean ourselves away from the federal government, but I also feel very strongly that we should not take on any responsibility or any programs and services unless we get adequate funding to put them in place and to deliver those programs and services. Any deal that we make with the federal government, as far as I am concerned, has to make financial sense. There is absolutely no reason for us to take over a program and service and not have the funds to be able to deliver it.

In terms of health and social services, again the Premier stated that health and wellness of our people is a pressing concern. I can’t disagree with that statement either. The advancement of health, social services and education, day care programs, all of those are things that we need to maintain and to try to improve in every community in the NWT if we possibly can. A number of areas that I consider we need to look at, and this is only a few of many, but realistic funding for non-government organizations, and provision of a larger number of affordable housing units, not that they could necessarily be more affordable, but we need more housing units which are affordable to the majority of our people. We need a reduction in violent crime. That is right across all of our communities unfortunately. We need to work at increasing the level of education in every one of our children in school.

One of the things that we need to work on, I believe, is to develop functional relationships with regional governments, treaty organizations, and municipal governments. There are many organizations out there which are working towards their own goals and visions, but they interact with ours immeasurably. There is no way we can divest ourselves of the actions that other organizations take. We need to work with them. It is going to be impossible for us to work with them if we don’t talk with them. I think there has been a bit of a lack in the previous Assembly and probably Assemblies before that. There seems to be a lack of either understanding on the part of both parties when they try to get together to discuss or there is a lack of actually getting together and having meaningful conversations. I think it is something that this Assembly can work on and should work on. I think if we can have a dialogue and if we can actually speak to the other organizations that have an impact on the work that we do, then it is going to be for the betterment of everybody concerned and we are going to get far further ahead than we would if we try to fight with each other.

One of the things that I don’t think the Premier mentioned in his statement but that is an important concern for me is the fact that we have a sort of a trend of urbanization occurring in the territory. Some people are moving from small communities into the larger centres. We are tending to get regional centres, Yellowknife for sure which has half of the territory’s population, but we are getting increasing populations in Hay River, Fort Smith and Inuvik. That urbanization puts a stress on our larger towns and city. When residents migrate to a regional centre, it creates needs in the regional centre in improvements in infrastructure or additions to programs and services. It puts a stress on the buildings in those centres, on the roads, on water and sewer, all of those things. I think probably the greater stress, though, is on the programs and services which tend to be required in generally the area of health and social services. People will migrate to the larger centre for a particular health service that is not available in their own community. They will send their children to a regional centre for education because they feel that it is better than what can be had in the community. As soon as you add numbers to the population, the same program or service that was available last year at probably a reasonable level is not going to be available this year because we are starting to tax it by having too many demands on it. We need to consider, when we are providing funding for programs and services, that we are providing it relative to the number of people that are accessing the service.

I think, though, that it is important to remember that any time we have a regional centre, and any time we put money into a regional centre, it is not just benefitting that centre. It is benefitting the whole of the Territories. One of my pet peeves is that we need not necessarily have just a treatment centre for the drying out of people with addictions, but we need a treatment centre which takes them from their addicted self to their clean self and supports them through a period of time until they are integrated back into the community and can exist in the community on their own. I think what we tend to do now is we put people into an addictions centre. We clean them up and then we throw them back out into the community and say, okay, here you go; survive. If they don’t have a support system, they are not going to survive. They are going to fall back into the way that they know, the easy way, because it is not easy to take yourself out of an addicted state.

One of the things, I guess the last thing, that I would like to mention is that our economy, particularly in Yellowknife, and I know certainly some of the small communities are not experiencing the joy of a booming economy like Yellowknife is, but a booming economy is a positive but it also creates opportunities. It does create opportunities, but it certainly can and I think is having a negative effect on our government. I think the Premier stated effective and efficient government. That, again, is something which I would agree with him on. It is something to which we should be aspiring, but I see that we do have pressing needs within the public service and outside our public service, particularly for training. Apprentices are one area where I don’t think we are doing enough to provide training for people who wish to become apprentices and can then work their way into the economy relative to the development that is up and coming. I am thinking particularly of the pipeline and of the diamond industry.

Enhancement of social problems is also something which is a direct result of a booming economy. The economy brings in lots of money. Lots of money brings in things to spend it on, and that tends to be a detriment to people’s health and well-being. So I think that somehow it is something we are going to have to look at during this Assembly, is the educational training and employment needs of our residents need to be addressed. It is important to me that we provide equal opportunity in every community in the Territories for the opportunities that this booming economy is providing. It is not easily done. I can’t say that I have a solution at this point. I don’t have a solution at this point, but I do think that it is something that we need to work towards.

With that, I think that is about all I have at this point. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you. Next on the list I have Mr. Beaulieu. If anybody else wants to speak, just put your hand up. Mr. Beaulieu.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I would like to thank the Premier for his sessional statement, as well. In my own priorities for what I thought that the government should be doing during the upcoming strategic planning process, I would like the government to look at targeting various areas across the Territories. Some of the main areas that I would like to see targeted, for example, in our goal of having healthy and educated people across the territory, I have always felt that it would be a task that would be difficult to achieve, that we are trying to target everybody across the Territories from the very young of our population to the elders. I think that if we just target too many groups or just target everyone, it is almost like a statement that the Premier made. If everything is a priority, then nothing is a priority. So that is my same feeling towards the way that we would be targeting the people to try to create a healthy and well-educated population across the Territories.

I feel that if we concentrate on creating a healthy and well-educated group of youth, then we would actually be achieving some of that objective. I think that, as far as the youth go, in addition to trying to educate them, I think that it is important that this government actually takes a look at some of the smaller communities where it is very difficult to provide youth infrastructure such as swimming pools, which is apparently very costly to operate, artificial ice which is very costly to operate, costly to bring in as infrastructure, but some of the things that government could be looking at is maybe some small infrastructure items, enhancing programs and services in the community, youth counseling and providing youth workers right across the territory where people are concentrating on working with the youth and working with programs. I see that now a majority of the people that are working with the youth across the territory are RCMP officers and teachers. We had a situation in one of the communities. I was talking to one of my friends. He indicated he was the only parent volunteer in a group of people trying to start up soccer teams, basketball teams and volleyball teams in one of the smaller communities and every other adult in the group there was either an RCMP officer or teacher. That’s a positive thing, I guess, for individuals that come to work in communities and start to work with the youth and so on.

I would like to see the government make a concentrated effort on reducing the cost of living across the territory. I

think again that it’s important that we end up targeting some items that maybe the government could subsidize to help some of the communities where we have the lowest employment, lowest average income, we have the highest cost of living, so that’s kind of backwards somehow. If individuals in those communities are lucky enough to be in homeownership, then most of their income goes towards operating the home and so on. So I find that kind of strange that the cost of living…I understand that it’s a transportation issue and so on. It’s not that I don’t understand why that exists, but I don’t understand why the government would allow it to continue on for so long without trying to address some of those areas where much needed food items like milk, for example, is something that most families can’t afford. Starting right at the beginning of their life with small children, as soon as they are able to advance from drinking only milk which is very healthy for them, they get into other things like Kool-Aid and that’s not good for the population. The youth population starts off not as healthy as maybe they should be. Maybe the government could look at some sort of programs like that.

I think it’s important also that the Government of the Northwest Territories assist in the process of ensuring that the land resource and self-government negotiations are completed in a timely manner, and that they work with both to be a conduit to try to make sure these land resource and self-government negotiations are completed and that the Government of the Northwest Territories is seen as a government that wants to see these negotiations completed. Sometimes in the smaller communities they aren’t seen as that. It would be good if the government could move to trying to complete the negotiations in land resource and self-government areas.

In the area of self-government, I felt that in the community and a lot of the responsibility of the Government of the Northwest Territories, there are various ways that the Government of the Northwest Territories would be able to try to complete the self-government negotiations with the communities. I have talked about decentralization of positions from the GNWT into the communities. I recognize, however, there are housing issues. It’s difficult just to house essential staff that we have in the communities like nurses and teachers and so on. So when we bring in other staff into these communities, that could become a challenge. I think this is a challenge that could be met by this government, by the government delegating some of the decision-making and ultimately devolving the decision-making to the communities once the options are in the communities and the positions are reporting to the local aboriginal governments or the community governments.

I feel the Northwest Territories government has a major infrastructure problem. Some of the things we spoke of today in the House with the infrastructure problems in the school, infrastructure problems with the highways and so on, I think the government has to take a serious look at actually borrowing some more money onto advancing some of the debt wall predictions that are further down the line, maybe five or six years down the line, and move that up before repairing the infrastructure costs double. Right now, there’s an indication that the infrastructure inflation rate is about 20 percent. So every project that we hold back for five years is going to double in cost, so I think it’s important that the government make the decision now and weigh the benefits of doing the infrastructure now,

borrowing the money now, paying the interest on that now versus waiting and paying the extremely high inflation cost on infrastructure development.

I feel that local employment -- Ms. Bisaro just mentioned apprenticeships -- is a key to trying to create some employment at the small community level. I recognize the difficulties in creating apprenticeships, getting people into apprenticeships. I think the Department of Education could do a lot of work in that area.

Some of the items I just want to touch on briefly --, I don’t have a lot of time left -- there are housing issues. I believe that housing issues can be addressed by going back to targeting the groups of individuals, whether they be seniors, single households, families and so on. It doesn’t do much for the core need if we are addressing family issues when the core need for family issues is lower than, for example, other groups that we are ignoring like singles and seniors. I think that traditional economies, seniors, and the idea of taking a look at zero-based review on infrastructure and O and M are probably things that the government could look at in the future, as well. Mahsi. Thank you.

---Applause

Next on the list I have Mr. Abernethy, Member for Great Slave.

Me? Thank you, Mr. Chair. I liked the sessional statement. I enjoyed listening to it and I enjoyed reading it afterwards, but I also agree with the comments of my colleagues. There are some areas that obviously I and we feel could have been a little bit stronger. For me, I am not going to go over what my colleagues have already gone over, but there are a couple of areas that I wanted to address, as well.

On page 5 during the statement, you said it’s important that we have an effective and efficient government. This is critical to me. Our employees are our most valuable resources. Without them, we have nothing. Without them, we will get nothing done. It’s important that they’re healthy and happy in the workplace, so they can be as effective and efficient as possible. We’ve heard, and we continue to hear, about morale issues in the government. I felt that it would have been stronger if you had mentioned more about supporting the public service and creating that healthy and effective work environment. They are our most valuable resource. They are the people who get the work done. I would have liked to have seen some more on how we can create that efficient and effective government that you talk about.

I would also like to have seen a little bit more in there on the voluntary sector. I firmly believe the voluntary sector adds a significant amount of value to the well-being and community of the Northwest Territories. The voluntary sector provides a lot of services and they are able to be very responsive to the people, the people that we serve as well. So I would like to have seen some additional reference in here to the voluntary sector.

Another area that is obviously important to me and close to my heart is art, tourism and culture. We have an amazing territory with many talented people. We have brilliant musicians, we have fantastic painters, craftspeople, writers. They are all out there and we need to work with them to promote them. We need to get their

names out and we need to have them as our champions for showing them what this territory is capable of. On a tourism related point, and I have said it before, if people see and become familiar with the culture and the art and the things that exist, they will come and want to see it. When they are here, they will take advantage of those things. We should be proud of the cultures of the Northwest Territories. We should be proud of the art. So I would have liked to have seen those things in there.

I was very pleased to see the desire to work together with others; aboriginal governments, Members on this side of the room and everybody. So I really liked the statement. Thank you.

---Applause

Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. Any other Members who want to speak to the sessional statement? If not, I will pass it over to the Premier. Mr. McLeod.