Thank you, Mr. Chair. There certainly are some good things in this budget, and I appreciate those. I think, at the same time, though, that we are missing opportunities. Here we are on our third budget. Things should be very clear to us now and, like I say, I see some missed opportunities.
I’d like to start, though, with concerns about capacity and implementation. We have a lot of what I think are very good strategies either developed or under development: the Water Strategy, the Hydro
Strategy, Energy Strategy and so on. The biomass strategy, I hope to hear about soon, but I really have serious concerns about capacity there. We can have all the strategies we want, but if we don’t have the capacity to implement, then that’s not going to get us anywhere. I don’t see that aspect of it reflected in the budget. The devil is in the details and perhaps there are details on that to come out. But that’s an area where if we do not nail down the expertise required for some of these things -- some of them do require very specific expertise -- all other jurisdictions are dealing with these same issues and will be nailing down that expertise.
So again, I say this is a missed opportunity if we’re not moving on building that into our system and that means, of course, that we need to, to stay within our means, drop some things.
There again, I’d rather see a more productive program review office. I think they made some good achievements with the general purpose office space review, but there’s so much more that they could and should be doing and it’s very difficult to find out information about that. One of the things on that is a cross-departmental thing, basically the role of integration and coordination; connecting the dots, basically. So many of our programs, so many of our issues and needs are cross-departmental, and yet we have these isolated, independent… I’m starting to sound like I must have sounded -- many of us did -- during our first budget review. So these things keep popping up and I don’t see us being effective at this yet.
On the policy development side, I haven’t seen much on that and compared to the need, I’m very happy to see the heritage fund highlighted in the Minister’s remarks. Let’s get that designed and in place ASAP. I think that’s been clear, both from the public and from my colleagues.
On the revenue side, I think we are again missing opportunities on the resource tax and the capital tax side of things. We heard that the pipeline, the Mackenzie Gas Project is moving forward and yet so many things… We’ve known about this for years and contemplating this and other sorts of non-renewable resource projects and haven’t moved on these things. These are missed opportunities, and the rates that we establish can be sensitive to economic situations, so that when we do have a kerfuffle like in 2008-09, they can respond automatically to that. But to keep postponing them, these are very unlikely to happen now in the life of this government. We were certainly talking about them when I joined, so presumably they were talked about before. We don’t even have the basic policy done to implement those if and when we decide to.
Mackenzie Gas Project, again, JRP report, what are the financial implications? These things are huge that are called for in the recommendations.
Again, I don’t see that well addressed. The policy side, the point of sale, as I understand it, the pipeline is being built 100 or 10 metres into Alberta, so the point of sale is down there and that removes an incredible opportunity for income for us. Where is our policy work on that and making sure NEB requires a point of sale to be Northwest Territories?
In a similar vein, the Petroleum Products Tax Act. We do not tax natural gas right now, and they’re talking about generating a lot of power with natural gas. Again, we’ve talked about that ever since I’ve been here, and presumably people talked about that before. That gets into the whole need to review that act and realign taxes on petroleum products to reflect the carbon content of our fuels, of those fuels, and thus also provide a foundation to any carbon pricing we might contemplate in the future and, again, a huge policy area that should have been highlighted.
There was a positive thing I wanted to mention there. I see on the property tax side… Sorry, I’ve got to seek those out. The property tax side, we did get some work done last year, and I think there are more opportunities there. The pipeline would certainly be a huge piece of infrastructure. How are we taking advantage of that given our limitations?
The public housing review subsidy -- thank goodness. Really good stuff there. Stanton Territorial Hospital; again, where are the plans for that? Those of us in Social Programs had a tour of the hospital. It’s been talked about ad nauseam in the House. Well, perhaps it’s in there in the details and I didn’t see it, but all of the Northwest Territories knows serious work is needed there. Let’s get it going.
Nutritious foods studies, and yet more, and nutritious food education programs, we have so much going. I think we can do better than that. We’ve talked about a milk subsidy. I think some real opportunity lies there.
Sole-source contracting work, I hope that we’re going to do a review and get… It should not be just used so much. It should be… And it shouldn’t be internal. We should really be putting that work out competitively much more than we are.
Cost of living, it’s so tied to our energy costs and energy initiatives, so I think there’s much more, again, opportunities to achieve more with the dollars that we’re spending in that. As per my statements and discussion earlier today, we need to ensure that whatever we do in these energy initiatives, they address the cost of living, the affordability of energy, and contribute to the development of the local economies by ensuring development of renewable, local energy, which would also, of course, build the ability to pay.
Aboriginal languages; I see we have some support there, but I don’t see enough support in that area.
Goyatiko, for example -- the local Yellowknife standing program based in Dettah -- offers courses for the ALSIP program, but they’re isolated courses, they’re not a program. We’ve moved, I understand, to a community-based delivery of that, and yet where is the support so that a full program can actually be provided rather than just isolated programs that don’t deliver the certificates that are needed.
Child care; you’ve heard me talk about child care before and you will again, I’m sure. Early childhood; very happy to see the $600,000 for rural and remote programs and I think there are further opportunities there. I wonder if we should start thinking about full child care services for the people of the Northwest Territories. That’s provided in Quebec and possibly other jurisdictions in Canada and has yielded a lot of benefits. So that’s something I think we should be thinking about.
Finally, the arts industry support has again increased a little bit. I am very happy to see that. I think that is giving us good returns. One area that needs additional work is the area of the film industry. Really big opportunities there. We have incredible talent that is not able to be put to work. Our support there is kind of Mickey Mouse. Of course there are some caribou issues that we are hearing about and could use a little additional spending to try and get at what the real reasons are for the exceptional declines we have seen.
Mr. Chairman, my time is up. Mahsi.