Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to echo the Premier by saying that the action we are taking right now is a stage. It has been led by incremental steps that have been taken since ’05–06. The information we have is that the major deficit for Stanton as well as Beaufort-Delta began in ’05–06. While the policy states that each authority should absorb 50 per cent of deficit and then the government will give 50 per cent of that, at that time it was thought to be too much for authorities to absorb.
As the Members have stated already, we do not want to be, or be seen as or be perceived as, rewarding that behaviour. Not that you could judge government department spending by good or bad behaviour, but it was incumbent on the government to figure out exactly what was causing the deficit.
It was in ’05–06 that real discussions and earnest — well, intense — discussions happened. I know this from reading briefing notes between the FMBS and the department and the authority on how we
could get to the bottom of what was causing the deficit. Since the years of ’05–06, ’06–07 and ’07–08, incremental small infusions of the cash were given to the authorities. In the meantime, any kind of major action like what we are doing here was deferred until we could get more clear analysis. The mode of doing that was the zero-based review that was decided upon, and that was instituted. It was talked about in ’06–07. It was instituted in the spring of ’07, and it was finished.
In April of this year we had a preliminary report on that zero-based review. It gives a cost accounting of how much it costs to deliver the programs we are doing in Stanton and Beaufort-Delta, but it doesn’t give us extra information as to whether we’re doing what we are doing as well as we can or whether we could do it differently. There are extra layers of analysis that we need to do, and that’s exactly what the public administrator at Stanton is doing. What we are gaining from the zero-based review as well as the public administrator’s work at Stanton will be followed up on with Beaufort-Delta.
Mr. Chairman, I have to say there is just a very complex set of factors that we think are contributing to the deficit. As the Member indicated, we need to be measured and careful about what steps we take because it does impact the front-line services and programs, and we need to do a good job at that.
Going forward, another action this government is taking is that we’re asking the authorities to have a balanced budget this year and that they be accountable every three months. That’s a step we’ve never taken before. We’re taking it to make sure we’re not in the same position as we are now. In order to do the balanced budget, we need to clear out the debt because there’s no way for the authorities to absorb some of these deficits.