I’d like to comment on the Sessional Statement in general. It says a lot about us, Mr. Chair, about facing the cutbacks and doing some reinvestments. We here at the Legislature are faced with these tough decisions. We’re going to work through them the best we can. But back home in the communities, the people are still kind of confused. They’re thinking of the $135 million cut today, so they’re scared for their jobs, basically.
I don’t think our government has done a good job of communicating. I know they’re doing the best they can. A lot the decisions for where we are today are fast-moving. They’re day-to-day decisions that have to be made. We have to take the time and bring our forces up to speed. There are a lot of things on the table, and they’re thinking their jobs will have to be cut. Oh, man, it’s hard to do that, but some of it will have to be done, and in programming as well.
Government has heard from this side of the House, as well. It’s something I’ve been sharing with my constituents. To do across-the-board cuts is not going to work. If you take 10 per cent off five programs, then you have five ineffective programs.
It’s far better to assess one of them, take that out and have four good programs that will better serve the people as opposed to five that don’t work.
I’m telling the people that we’re taking the time. Our budget process this particular year is being drawn out. We’re accepting these. Nothing’s cast in stone yet. For the most part, they kind of agree with me, but at the same time they’re still seeing some changes internally at the regional level. They’re thinking, “Oh, my God.” I’m telling them that it’s a moving target. We’re working with government and we’re moving along.
Government has to be there, too, and inform our employees of the savings as we go along. It makes for good management once we let everybody know which way we’re going. And include all departments in targeted reductions. We want to be involved, and I believe employees want to be involved. They’re the ones who are front-line workers. They work with the programs and know which ones need bolstering and which ones do not make sense anymore. There are lots of programs out there that are very old; they’re archaic, I would say. Maybe the purpose doesn’t serve their ends anymore, especially in this new technological age and new way of doing things, Mr. Chair.
There are some other things that are going on. One of the biggest things that affects my riding is the whole housing issue. I’ve had discussions with the Minister Responsible for the Housing Corporation on several occasions. Housing is moving away from helping the people. People just don’t understand that. They don’t know what’s going on. Every time they go to the Housing department to ask for assistance, they say, “Sorry, we can’t help you. You don’t meet this guideline or that criterion.” In the end, our people aren’t being served adequately or served at all.
To me it looks like there’s a very small window. If you don’t make a certain income threshold and the income that you make exceeds the guidelines, that window is very small wherein you can fit to make the guidelines so you can be approved.
The other thing, too, is a lot of our people are in arrears. They just can’t seem to catch up. There again, the Housing Corporation is out of it, but I believe it still has some duty because they are the ones that caused all these arrears. They were more flexible. When the Housing Corporation was running it, it was more flexible. People still wanted the Housing Corporation to run it. In fact, in one of my first Member’s statements, I spoke about housing and how it should be reverted to the Housing Corporation, only because it seemed to be working then.
We’ve changed the program over to the EC&E. It’s must be working a bit there, but I don’t believe it’s
fully working. Just last week I was telling Mr. Speaker how, for one lousy thousand dollars, they had a woman and all her family thrown out of a house. It was boarded up, and she wasn’t able to get in there to get her children’s clothing. Has government drifted so far that we stopped helping people? For $1,000, our government could have easily overlooked that. The court costs easily exceed the $1,000. So what are the parameters? What are the limits?
We’re talking about helping our people, how proud we are of our land and our resources and opportunities here. But at the same time we’re throwing out whole families for a lousy thousand-dollar bill. That just doesn’t sit right with me at all. That’s something I believe we should be addressing as well. It says nothing about that in here. But when it says “helping people” — and that’s what I think it is — it’s like, “Okay, you owe $1,000. Let’s work your way around it.” Let’s keep them in there, because it’s going to cost a heck of a lot more than $1,000 to find a new place for the people. In fact, they are split up right now, and that’s something else I have been dealing with.
Another thing I’ve been giving a lot of thought to is that we talk a lot about resource revenue sharing and devolution and I believe it still should be a focus of this government. The Premier says it is, but in Ottawa he said it’s not; there’s no appetite there. At the same time, we’re the government; we’re making decisions. But why are we listening to someone else? Because the feds aren’t listening to us doesn’t mean that we’re not in control. We are in control of our government. People collect here to make decisions, and if the decision is to pursue resource revenue sharing or at least to object, to control, as much of the resource revenues that are leaving our land, I think we should be doing that too. We should be working toward it, not stopping all our efforts. Maybe Ottawa doesn’t want to deal with us, but we should continue with the effort.
Much has been said, as well, over the years about setting up the heritage fund idea. I think I shared that with the Premier as well. At least that stops the bleeding; that stops the flow getting out of here. We set up a heritage fund; we then put the money into the heritage fund. It will sit there and grow until we in the North can get along and play in our sandbox. The federal government has often said that they’re not going to provide any resource revenue or devolution until we get a consensus here in the North. Because we are an evolving, growing political jurisdiction, many aboriginal aspirations and regional independence is happening, and it’s kind of tough
At the same time I believe we can take the lead. I believe that our government can sell a heritage fund idea. The whole goal is, of course, to stop the flow of our resource revenues out of the North and
at least put it in a trust fund where it can grow. There are several examples of that, and I think the best one will be Alaska, where they have a growing fund. They, the government, are able to access some of it — I think it’s 10 per cent a year they can access — but the rest just goes in there, and you need a majority vote to access those funds. I think if we pursue that, it will be a long way from just saying: “The government doesn’t want to deal with us. We’re not going to do anything right now.”
I urge this government, once again, to look at these options and pursue it. I’m sure that this side of the House will give you full support, whatever viable option is there for you to do.
I would just end there, Mr. Chair. I’m very happy to have this opportunity to speak with regard to the sessional paper and to my views of the N.W.T. Thank you.