Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Since this has already been referred to in the House, I am going to follow on the lead of my colleague from Frame Lake on this whole issue of refocusing government and reviewing our boards and agencies in the Northwest Territories. In the previous government I sat on a committee with Minister Miltenberger and Minister Lee as we looked at agencies, boards and commissions.
Mr. Speaker, when we are talking about refocusing government and looking at our governance structure here in the Northwest Territories, there are many, many considerations to be taken into account. I do not believe we should think that because something looks good on paper, it is the way to go. We can draw a fancy org chart with all kinds of ideas to consolidate things like housing, education and health service boards. The fact is that our regions and our communities are so extremely diverse that a cookie cutter, one size fits all approach will not work. The impetus for this reorganization should come with extensive consultation, and perhaps even the request for it should be from the ground up, as opposed to us dictating from this level of government down. We
have for many years in our government talked about the need to build capacity in our communities and in our regions. We need to keep that in mind with the self-government negotiations that will continue to take place.
I am personally fearful of what could happen: the destructive effect of taking a less than cautious approach to any consideration of consolidation of boards and agencies. I believe that a lot of good work has been done. A lot of money has been spent to develop some of these boards, and to take a kind of wholesale approach that’s not well thought out could result in considerable damage.
So I guess my caution to the Minister who will be heading up this review on refocusing government would be to proceed with caution and respect the work that has been done to develop these agencies in the communities and in the regions. Please bear in mind going forward, as perhaps more self-government and aboriginal government take on a greater role, that these boards may be needed to ensure local and very good quality input into the provision of these very important services. Thank you.