Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the opportunity to comment on the sessional statement. Some of what I’ve got to say today I certainly will be saying more this week and as we go towards the end of session. I think some of it needs to be done as a Members’ Statement or something to that effect or spoken about on the floor here in a formal setting. But I’m going to talk about a few things.
I wanted to start with devolution and resource revenue sharing. And I know the Premier mentions it, actually mentions a Devolution Agreement in his Sessional Statement, but there’s no mention of resource revenue sharing. In the four bullets that he talks about focusing on with the federal government, I think that’s a mistake. I think resource royalty sharing, revenue sharing, is something we can’t lose sight of because, in these
tough economic times or tough financial times — economically, things are good, but financially, things are rough — we need to go after whatever revenue streams we can. I’ve said this before; I’ll say it again today: I think we have to look at getting control of what we can.
In the past, Transportation and Health were devolved from the federal government. I think we need to focus our efforts on areas of our operation that could get us the most benefit, that we could derive the most results from. To me, oil and gas is one area we should absolutely focus on here in the next four years and try to get control of that. If we don’t do that, we’ll just keep spinning our tires like the last government did and the government before that and the government before that and the government before that with, you know, not much progress being made. So I think those are certainly some things that we would key on with the federal government.
And the other interesting thing too. When the Premier talks about discussions with the Prime Minister and with Ottawa, he doesn’t mention infrastructure. I mentioned that in my statement today in the questions I had for the Premier, the fact that Nunavut has signed a $242 million deal.
I think the Government of the Northwest Territories…. With the infrastructure deficit facing the Territory and the demands that are out there, that has to be front and centre. In any negotiations with Ottawa, any discussions Ministers are having with Ottawa, we need to make sure that we’re at the table, that we’re going to get the investment dollars from Ottawa accruing to residents here in the Northwest Territories and in the communities, whose demands are being placed upon us. So we need to do that.
The other thing I wanted to touch on and talk about is communication. I know that in the Sessional Statement, the Premier talks about, you know, laying out the approach that’s developed by cabinet and had input from caucus. That’s not entirely true, Mr. Chairman. You know, we all went through this strategic planning exercise together. And Members on this side of the House did not — did not — have an opportunity to, you know, say yea or nay to a $135 million budget reduction exercise over two years. That just didn’t include us.
As well, the Premier talks about these committees of cabinet that are going to look at the reinvestment of dollars over the next few years. That doesn’t include Regular Members. There’s no inclusion of Regular Members in those committees. To me, Mr. Chairman, if we are going to move forward together, if we are going to work together, the sooner that can happen and the more opportunities that that can happen, the better off we’ll all be. And the more the Members on this side of the House
will be able to buy in to what it is that cabinet is trying to achieve.
Again, I think you’ll hear more about that from me. I do agree with the overall mindset that the government has in going forward, in trying to…. Because I’ve said it all along: our growth is not sustainable. Our spending isn’t sustainable. And we can’t continue on the path that we’ve been on. Corrections have to be made, and I wish the government well in the reduction exercise and in trying to find out where it is in our organization that we can achieve some reductions.
I often thought that the best approach would be to go out and do the analysis first and the zero-based review, if you wanted to do a couple of departments or three departments a year — go out and do that work, and come back with exactly what you would be reducing. Because in the current scenario, we’re not really sure what’s being put on the table. It’s left up to departments. And again, we don’t have that level of detail on what departments were asked to get. We don’t know what they’ve got yet. So there’s still a lot of work to be done there, Mr. Chairman.
I do look forward to seeing that and to working with the government to achieve the end result: that is, to try to refocus government, to try to get it to operate more efficiently and effectively. I think we can achieve that. Like I said earlier, I think the communication has to be at a level where the Regular Members feel the buy-in and feel some sense of satisfaction that they are being consulted, that they are being included in the government’s plans. To date I just don’t know if that’s happened, Mr. Chairman.
Again, I do want to say to the Premier that his Sessional Statement will be a basis for where we go from here. I do look forward to working with the Premier and cabinet on trying to make the changes that are necessary to ensure the functional operation of the government going forward.