Mr. Speaker, I, too, am in support of the motion. My reasons for supporting the motion and not supporting board reform as it stands are many; many of which I heard from other MLAs here today. One of my main reasons is that there are so many unknown factors because nobody really knows what the plan will come, how the plan will evolve.
No one I talked to likes the board reform. I’ve asked many people in my riding about the board reform and, honestly, not one person said, boy, that’s a good idea. You should go with it. I also feel that there is a tremendous lack of consultation, if any real consultation has occurred at all, with the organizations, some of the organizations associated with these three disciplines and also just with the governments of the communities and also the regional governments that support the communities at this time.
I also feel that the management of education at the community level, at all levels across the Territories, and the management of health and the management of housing are all very difficult jobs. They have vastly different mandates. I cannot fathom how we could find people that would be able to be efficient in managing all of the disciplines and how they could maintain focus and maintain the importance of all those disciplines when we have, as I indicated in my Member’s statement, health, which is very demand driven, and housing; also it is very demand driven. It may not be as demand driven as health because of the nature of both of those disciplines, yet the majority of education, aside from the income support portion of education, education is very, I’d say, proactive, thinking about the future, trying to figure out ways in the future and how to make the students feel good and have the students take as much education as possible with them throughout their life so that they become productive members of society. So housing and health, a couple of departments which are demand driven are, in a sense, very social departments, and well-educated people will have better health. That is a fact. Well-educated people will have less demands for social housing. One department is trying to be proactive. It is not because of the way that departments are, the people in it or anything, it is just the nature of the beast, I suppose. I feel that that focus will be lost with the amalgamation of these departments.
I also feel that this government has had amalgamation mishaps. I really do. Some they have undone to a great expense to the people of the Northwest Territories and some are just beginning to prove, but not without great expense and great frustration. We deal with some of the things that this government has done; the amalgamation of the Technical Services Centre. The objective was to create one department that would be efficient, supportive and more cost efficient as well as just being efficient at work. Yet I feel, although I don’t have the numbers myself, that was a tremendous cost and it is probably blown way beyond what the initial budgets were, the amalgamation of Human Resources and some of the things that were introduced into Human Resources. That has actually caused a tremendous amount of frustration amongst the public service. When you have high paid managers that have to sit there in front of the computer and figure out how to run a system to approve leave for their staff, Mr. Speaker...It was incredible. When HR was first being introduced and amalgamated, a lot of those things were wrong. It was frustrating. I was amazed that the government didn’t stop and say, whoa, I think this is a wrong idea. But that didn’t happen. I think things are improving now; again probably at a tremendous cost. But I don’t think we are doing this to save money anyways, so I really don’t know why.
I thought about it. Things are actually not too bad. I had an opportunity to go to St. Pat’s School with Minister Lafferty and meet some of the teachers, and some of the teachers from Lutselk’e and Fort Resolution were there. I know that there is a pride amongst the teachers, students and schools. I know for a fact that in this community of Yellowknife where I live, there is a pride. The kids that are in St. Pat’s are proud to be in St. Pat’s and the kids that are in Sir John Franklin are proud to be in Sir John Franklin. Those are tangibles that could potentially be removed. These are non-tangible items, but they are things that could be removed. Pride could be removed by just making everything the same, just putting everything together. There is nothing that stands out anymore. They are all going to be viewed as one. Sometimes you look at these things and you think about where these things evolved from. Mr. Speaker, whose idea was it? Sometimes you think, well, if you go back far enough, it is probably a southern consultant.
---Laughter
I thought that. Every time these southern consultants come in with great ideas -- maybe ideas that fit well when you are managing huge numbers of bureaucrats and huge populations that they are serving -- it doesn’t work well here. I don’t think there has ever really been a tendency for this government to look at more than consultants and the people that live here and know what will work. It is often the high-priced southern consultants that come up with these ideas that don’t really work, but no one ever admits that they don’t work so we just forge ahead.
The other thing I thought of was, as it is, is it too much work for the government? I can’t really see that being an issue because if they think managing 67 boards is cumbersome, try managing three disciplines in seven boards. I’m pretty sure that will be extremely cumbersome and frustrating and the loss of authority to the communities. That, I think, is one of my key issues with this whole thing. The people that want to assist their own kids to get educated, the people that have an interest at heart to make sure that their kids have the right stuff in their schools to be educated the way they want I think would be lost. I think that is going to be a management unit. I think that is what these boards will become, management units. How can they possibly pay specific, detailed attention to one area of housing, one area of health or an area of education? When we do things like this, we never look at things that are not tangible; things like pride. Teachers are proud to be teachers. Do they just want to be viewed as a bureaucrat that may deliver housing? Or maybe they are nurses. Who knows? Nurses are proud to be nurses too. Community development workers are proud to be community development workers. They don’t want to be all
mashed together and managed together. They are people. They have special skills. They chose to be what they are. They shouldn’t be mixed in with other people that they didn’t choose to be managed together. It should be something that should be kept separate.
Most important, I think, is the students. I think it’s very important that we do what we can to try to keep things the same. None of the students are actually happy at all about this either. From what I heard anyway, the students are not happy. Those students are excited, especially here, especially in communities where there is more than one school. The students in Lutselk’e, the students in Res, they have pride and they are successful. They are becoming more successful and they have DEAs, local DEAs that watch out for these kids. Those boards will be gone under this model.
So for those reasons and all of the other reasons that I have heard around here today, I will support the motion. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.