Mr. Speaker, there are some things I like in this budget, and a number of them were emphasized in the highlights of the budget by the Minister of Finance last week: $3.1 million for nurses in small communities, $500,000 extra for the arts and culture programs. I like the land-use planning focus and policy development on water and some of the renewable energy initiatives. However, many of these — and all of the highlights, essentially — add up to about 6 per cent of the
budget and really don’t reflect the degree of change that I think we need.
I have concerns regarding the lack of a cohesive and apparent vision throughout this document. At least, I don’t see it. It may be there in some other perspectives, but I don’t see it.
I think we all agreed on the need for living within our means and for some redirection, which would be based on program review. I think that was a starting point, and we were all at the table at that point. However, this budget to me appears more “business as usual” with a few exceptions: the early childhood development and child care. I like those programs.
In particular, the lay-offs. My understanding of our agreement on how to approach this was that they would be truly based on program review, that to sort of randomly lay them off or even to eliminate positions that were vacant or with retirees was not appropriate for redirection that was based on some thorough and comprehensive analysis, yet that is what appears to me has been done here.
Another aspect of this that I think goes against our vision is that there is centralization. I think we’re talking about 70 layoffs in the regions and about 50 in Yellowknife. As Members have pointed out, from time to time repeatedly, the loss of even one or two people in a small community is a huge blow to that local economy.
I have to acknowledge that we were dealing with the impacts of coming into this situation in the middle of a budget year, that we had some time pressures that we all played a role in ramping up and that the layoffs were an added complexity that we had to deal with. I want to stress that we really should only be changing what can be based on a thorough program review, and that was the understanding that I think we were moving forward on, and that hasn’t happened. I asked the Premier, the Minister of Finance, about this the other day, and he didn’t provide a response to that question. I still have that question, as I know a lot of other people do. We simply haven’t been provided with that reasoning, and that’s what is lacking here.
The communications — I’ve said this before — have not been sufficient to enable the public to participate in this debate. I see in the budget presented that there’s a commitment being made for consultation on revenue generation and so on in the future, and I wholeheartedly support that. But, again, I think that should have been part of this. We repeatedly brought this up, and it didn’t ever seem to result in more effective communication or a serious attempt to address that issue.
Finally, I still don’t see a visionary and progressive response to the issues that are most fundamental to me and my constituents and that got me to the
table. These are the issues that I mentioned in my Member’s statement this afternoon: that of climate change and the rising costs and declining availability of oil.
There’s been a lot said already on process, and I’ve said a few additional comments. I can’t compare it to the past, but what I will say is that the Premier, when we met with him on a number of occasions, made commitments that we responded to positively. Unfortunately, they did not seem to come to fruition for whatever reason. I’m not laying blame here, but the fact is that those commitments didn’t ever get realized to the point where we actually felt like we had serious input into this process.
I want to acknowledge the commitment of this government to form a special joint committee on climate change. I think that’s an indication of some interest there. I do have a continuing lack of confidence that recommendations from that would fall into fertile ground based on some of the statements I’ve heard on what our direction is going to be. But anyway, I wanted to emphasize that I do appreciate that.
Finally, I look forward to debating this bill, and I will fully participate in that. I hope that we can clearly identify the opportunities that we have and move in that direction, something that I don’t think has been done yet, and if there’s any way to get that done through this debate or through some flexibility on the part of the Cabinet, that would be much appreciated by me and my public. Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.