Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Last Friday your Committee of the Whole considered a motion to delete funding from the Department of Justice for planning towards the renovation of the Territorial Women’s Correctional Centre in Fort Smith. In a very unusual step a Minister other than the Minister responsible for the department whose estimates were before the committee spoke to the motion. Mr.
Miltenberger is the Member for
Thebacha, which includes the community of Fort Smith.
In speaking to the motion, the Member made the following remarks, and I quote from the unedited Hansard of May 30, 2008: “And as we keep open minds to look at all the options, one of the options that hadn’t been considered is we’re talking about repatriating a bunch of adults into a supportive living structure that has yet to be built. Has that been considered as a possibility for Arctic Tern? I don’t know. But clearly it’s a circumstance that strikes me as interesting and somewhat ironic.”
Mr. Speaker, under section 2 of our rules the privileges enjoyed by all Members and the House as a collective are defined. One of the fundamental privileges that each of us as Members enjoys is freedom from obstruction and intimidation in relation to our duties as elected representatives.
Mr. Speaker, the comments made by the Member for Thebacha last Friday are a great cause of concern for me and should be cause for concern for all Members. While it is very unusual for a Minister to speak in favour of a project in his or her riding, it is a mystery to me why the Minister would make reference to a completely unrelated project in this debate. The adult supportive living facility referenced by the Member is a project that has already been approved by this House and has no relation to the project in Fort Smith. I am concerned that residents of Hay River listening to the debate now may be wondering whether the supportive living facility is now in question because their MLA dared to speak against a project in a Minister’s riding based on the merits of that project at this particular time.
We cannot do business this way. As 19 Members in this consensus system of government we owe it to the people of the Northwest Territories to carry out our debates with integrity. We adopted a code of conduct at the outset of this Assembly. This included a vow to do our utmost to distribute resources fairly and justly. How are we to do this if we cannot question the allocation of those resources if some resources are off limits because they are in a Minister’s constituency?
We have an obligation as Regular Members to hold the government to account. We need to be able to weigh the proposed spending of public dollars and infrastructure projects on their merits. This involves asking questions and sometimes voting against the government proposals if they do not bear up against that scrutiny. This is our responsibility and our duty.
I believe the Member for Thebacha’s comments were made to intimidate me as I attempted to carry out my duty and my right as a Member to vote the way I wished on this potentially contentious motion. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.