Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Stephen King began one of his books by saying, “He wasn’t a good boy, but he wasn’t a bad boy either.” So what we have is…. That’s how I’d like to talk about the budget: it’s not a bad budget, but it’s not a good budget either.
It took a lot of hard work to get to where we are today. It took the power of the 11. It had a big impact, working with Cabinet, because when we first started the process so many months ago, we had our input, and for whatever reason it didn’t seem like we had our footprint. I mentioned it several times that it didn’t have the impact that our constituents wanted. They came to us with their letters of job losses and so on. So we came back here. We went to Cabinet, and we met with them. At that time our esteemed Premier said, “No.” He said, “No changes to the budget. We’re holding the line. This must be done.” That kind of shocked us and took us for a loop because we’re talking about
consensus-style government. We worked hard as the 11. We stood up many times, united, and we showed government that consensus style government means involving everybody, the majority of the views. We were very pleased, actually, to see about a week ago or so that the government said, “Oh, yeah, we’re now negotiating a budget.”
That speaks to where we should be at all times: looking at the resources, what we can do for the communities, the regions and, indeed, our staff, too, who are the backbone of our organization. Those are the people who we must take care of. I do concur that within the process, we have our input early.
I would be remiss, of course, not to mention the hard work of the Union of Northern Workers and their supporters and how involved they got in our budget process. They involved the communities, they reached out to us politicians, and above all they represented their constituents to the best of their ability. I’d like to say, as well, that I hope we’ve done the same as politicians.
For us, in the many debates we’ve had over the past four weeks…. We got to be a thorn in the side of government, and we kept needling them. In fact, I think Mr. Premier said at one point, “Look, we don’t want to move to old-style politics,” when we were doing tit-for-tat or trading. I don’t know what that is. Old-style politics — I don’t go back that far. For me, Mr. Speaker, it’s not old-style politics to take care of the regions and the communities; it’s consensus-style politics. We’re all representatives for the many different areas.
I do want to say that the road was daunting. It looked hard. It was very, very much uphill. When I left here and went home to my community, I got all phone calls, letters, e-mails and petitions that said, “Look, this is happening.” It also seemed impossible.
We came back here, all 19 of us, about four weeks ago, and the gloves were on, Mr. Speaker. The gloves were on, and the fight was on. It was not only with government but in the committee too. We had many fights, and they worked out. That’s how you challenge yourself, and that’s how you build the intestinal fortitude to speak up for yourself and for your people and, at the same time, remain united and do the best thing you can for our people for whom we serve — the reason why we are here.
Once again, I would like to thank my constituency, all the communities, Grannies from Nahendeh who signed the petitions that I brought here to the House. Our communities spoke for consensus-style government. The people spoke, Mr. Speaker. It is a democracy and not an autocracy. That was one of the key things. The impact is huge in our small communities, even more so in the small and remote
communities. Loss of one job is huge. When that capacity, when that skill level leaves a small community, it is just irreplaceable.
When it all began, people came to me and they said, “Well, are you going to vote no? Are you going to kill the budget?” I said, “Well, I’m going to vote no if I cannot save any jobs.” That’s what I did, right off the bat: I voted no. I told my people that’s what I would do. “But I can’t promise…. I’ll fight hard. I’ll fight like hell,” is the word I used. I did that. I came here and I fought like crazy. In fact, I was telling government, Mr. Premier and the Cabinet Ministers that I was on a hunger strike. That’s the way I used that. And it worked. Look at me now.
Laughter
I’m happy to say I can probably eat the budget that’s there. I can swallow the budget that is before us. That’s going towards where I’m going to stand today. I’m going to stand with the budget. I’m confident and comfortable that I fought hard. I
represented my people. I, too, didn’t get
everything that I wanted for my constituency and my people. There’s still a net loss of jobs. But the key people that are there are being re-profiled. They are good, hard-working people, and they deserve the positions in the communities that they wish to work in.
As well, I’d like to commend our Chair of the Priorities and Planning Committee. Somebody called her a coach. The Chair, Mrs.
Jane
Groenewegen, she’s done well. Having to sit with 11 people from different backgrounds and different opinions…. Well, I used to be Chair in the former Assembly, and I know how hard it is to work with 11 people. Getting 11 people to agree is a huge, huge challenge. But she did it. She took 11 people with diametrically opposed views, which is something else, and was able to unite us, not only once but many, many times, in order to make an impact — as I think I told one of the Ministers — to help government make decisions.
With that, Mr. Speaker, I’d just like to say that today I will be voting in favour of this budget. I’ll look forward to the business plans that are coming up in the fall time. I can tell the people of the North that I will be working just as hard to make the next budget work for our people, our communities and our region. With that, mahsi cho, Mr. Speaker.