Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Just with regard to the bill and the budget that’s before us, I’ve given it lots of thought. I’ve read the budget documents. I’ve given them lots of thought, as I have as well to all the requests that I’ve been working with Cabinet for the past seven months. It’s been my experience as a previous Member in the 15th Assembly that often when we’re
lobbying Cabinet and the Ministers on the floor of the House here, we’re talking about our issues. We’re talking about our roads, our housing issues, our health issues, our lack of teacher housing. It’s been my experience that a lot of those little things make their way into the budget. What I found to my great dissatisfaction this time around is that a lot of
my issues did not make it to the budget. When I talk to my colleagues, I get passionate about it because I fought hard to get them in the budget, and I just don’t see them there.
I’ve got no ownership over the budget. I don’t know what happened to my requests. They must have gone out into the open air. I think part of the system is that the Premier is right. They make an effort to contact us and work with us, but they have to listen to us too. I just don’t feel that’s happened in this case. In fact, when I go back to my riding people phone me; they contact me and say, “Look, Kevin, did you know this is cut or this is not going to happen this year?” It’s like I’m the last to know.
That should not be the case. People expect me to be involved with government, to work along. When I don’t know stuff like that, to them it’s a negative. They think I know and approve of the actions that are before us or the actions they are faced with. That’s just not the case. I always find I’m explaining myself that I didn’t know anything about it. That doesn’t make me have good stature when I say I didn’t know about it. I should be the first to know about it.
In that sense, there are a lot of issues. I go to Fort Liard. With Highway No. 7 there, we’ve had some good initiatives over the past four or five years. We were rebasing, reconstructing those roads there. Now I find that has been discontinued. So to me that’s money gone from my riding, And where did it go? I’m not too sure what the priorities of Transportation are. They’re certainly not Highway No. 7 if they’re not going to finish this project. There’s only something like 22 kilometres left there, Mr. Speaker. It wouldn’t have taken very much to complete that.
There are several other initiatives. I was working with the last Cabinet in the last government, and it looked like we were going to get some kind of test chipsealing from the Providence junction towards Fort Simpson. I was hoping that would have made the books. Twenty kilometres is not very much for a good road that was rebuilt and restructured, got new culverts, et cetera. It wouldn’t have taken very much to chipseal 20 kilometres, but that’s not in the road. I’m really upset about that.
As well, I’m working with Housing. I still go to the communities, and people are still coming to me for their housing issues, Mr. Speaker. They’re appealing to me because the programs aren’t working. I keep telling the Housing Minister, “Look, get this appeal system up and running, because people have to be heard. They want to be heard, and there’s a gap there that needs to be filled.” They keep telling me it’s going to be in fall or sometime next year. That’s just not good enough for our constituents.
Once again, I don’t think that the government has done a good job communicating with the people. They’ve cut back. I heard it was five or six people from my riding in Nahendeh. I was working with the fellow from the UNW in Fort Simpson. He showed me it’s actually 13 positions that are really being affected that I didn’t see.
The first thing I did when I got the budget document: I opened it up, I went to my riding, and sure enough there are lots of positions gone. That’s distressing to me and my constituents. I’ve got many, many small communities, Mr. Speaker. In fact, I’ve got the most communities of all the MLAs, and they’re all small communities. The impact of the loss of even one job is about $120,000 or so. It depends if it’s a fully funded position or not. That’s dollars gone from the community. Multiply that by 13, and that’s a huge impact for my region alone.
Like my colleague from Inuvik Mr. McLeod said, his region’s been adversely impacted. I’d like to make the same argument as well. Per capita my region is being impacted quite severely. It just does not make sense to me, to my constituents, my communities or my leadership.
So I’m up here today, Mr. Speaker, to tell you I cannot support this budget. I did not have any input into it. At least I don’t see my input in the budget. For that reason, today I’m going to vote no for this budget, and I hope it fails at second reading. If not, I’ll do like Mr. McLeod says: I’m going to fight like crazy to get what I want in this budget, and I’ll do what it takes to get my needs met and my constituents represented in this budget. Mahsi cho.