Thank you, Mr. Chairman. In regard to the response to listening to the MLA feedback, we have been listening very carefully. This document has gone through extensive consultation work with committee. We went through interim appropriation to allow for that cycle to take place. In addition, we got feedback when we finished the review of business plans from committees, which we are going to respond to through the supplementary appropriation process
and we’ll have that debate. I would point out the asks in that letter; the combined asks, of my recollection, were in the neighbourhood of $4.3 or so million. So I think we should take some pride in the fact that we have $1.4 billion worth of a budget here that has been through our consensus system. So we have been listening; we’ve been working together to get to where we are and we’re going to continue to work together over the next month to get us to the third reading so that we can have this money freed up and put into use.
The issue – and I’ve heard the Member’s concern over the years – about tying our economy to the global economy, that it’s a bad idea and in this world where everything is tied together. I just noticed in the fruit trays and such, we’re eating things like kiwi fruit and mangos, which we didn’t do 20 or 30 years ago. Just as a simple example, but we’re truly in a global village here. How we would disconnect our economy from the rest of the world when we get $4 billion in GDP and most of that comes from the diamond mines, most of which the project is sold down south is something that we’d have to take a serious look at, but I appreciate the Member’s concerns.
One of the things that’s driving us in terms of our budget and our managing the money is we have a Fiscal Responsibility Policy that requires us to free up money to pay for capital. It says when we don’t meet the conditions in the Fiscal Responsibility Policy, we have two years to get back into compliance in terms of meeting the criteria, and over the last year or so we haven’t hit our targets. We’ve been running a deficit and now we’re obligated to that policy, among other things, and other than the fact it makes good sense to get back into compliance, which we intend to do.
The resource rents, once again, the Member is indicating that he’s surprised at my lack of knowledge. I will get boned up on the subject, but I can tell you that until devolution comes along, we don’t have the levers of authority that we need in this area of resource rents and other things, like dealing with all the issues related to water.
The idea of a revenue-neutral carbon tax and backing away from sustainability, we’ll continue to have that discussion. I’m of a mind that if you have a community… Let me use an example. If you have a remote community, a thermal community that has no other choice and you put on a carbon tax and you want to encourage them to do other good things, other alternatives where there are none, what benefit does that do to us when we already have the highest energy rates in the country? I believe there’s a way to get to the same goal from a different path. At this point things like investing heavily in solar and biomass, geothermal, looking at getting our hydro capacity realized, that will do the same thing in terms of our greenhouse gas
emissions, getting our reliance off of fossil fuels. So I think once again we want the same thing, but we have to look at all the ways to get there.
The issue of no cuts – and we shouldn’t really take a lot of pride in that fact and we should actually be looking for efficiencies – there are two different things here. The intent when I made that comment about no cuts, on a comparative basis when you look at the federal government, when you look at Ontario, when you look at New Brunswick, pick a province that is going through massive deficit reduction, layoffs, program cuts, increases to taxes, and if you look at some of the countries in Europe that are bankrupt, where they’ve cut pensions, laid off tens of thousands of people, my reference was the fact that we should take some comfort that we’ve managed ourselves well enough to avoid that level of deficit reduction.
The education is not missing. We clearly, as I indicated, have a budget of $1.5 million. I think I indicated in my statement it’s $818 million, I believe, is going to help Education, Housing, Justice, and corrections as part of Justice. Education’s budget is going to be $300 million-plus this year, so I think we have a very continued, strong commitment to education and it’s there and it’s visible in this document when you go through the education budget.
I take the Member’s comments and support for the mental health and addictions program and expanding that.
The Land Use Sustainability Framework, I agree with the Member. He and I have been waiting for some years. It was a priority of the last Assembly that never got done. I would point out two things. We do have an existing Sustainability Policy. That is in effect in what we are doing and what we have done in this process is just do more than added another word. We’re trying to integrate that Sustainability Policy into the land use so that it’s an integrated piece and we hope to have a document on the table – and I will qualify that with a “finally” – by next month to be able to have a discussion on it. I do appreciate the Member’s frustration and ask his continued forbearance even though I do accept the, not derision but the pointed comments he makes about our not getting it done yet again.
The Macroeconomic Policy, yes, has been, it was developed and in place and I think it’s an acknowledgement on our part that we are going to make it play a more central role as a lens through which we will review our business plans and economic initiatives going forward, so that in fact it’s not just a policy sitting on the shelf but a functional working policy that will assist us.
The Mineral Strategy, I appreciate once again the Member’s concerns about the issues related to energy. There is work being done on energy that we’re going to come forward with. We’ve made
some references in the budget address and the Commissioner’s address speech from the throne about the work that’s coming forward on energy, hydro, solar, dealing with the Inuvik issue, the continued commitment to the alternative energy, and we will be following through on that.
The Member made a comment about why would we even be doing the work on minerals because we don’t have the authority. I would just point out to the Member that we made that very conscious decision five years ago now on the Water Strategy, that we didn’t have legal authority at the time, but we knew very well we were headed down the road to take over that authority. That process took four years to develop and now we’re fully engaged in transboundary negotiations. If we hadn’t taken those four years or preparatory work, we would be entering devolution without our thinking clear on water. We’re taking the same approach, though the time frame is shorter, on the Mineral Strategy. We know we’re going to be taking over that responsibility soon and we can’t get ready any sooner. That’s what we intend to do.
The regulatory reform that we referred to we used as an example avoiding rate cliffs. That we want to come up with a way where we have much more modest ongoing increases so that the shock is not there, but regulatory reform talks about much more than that and it implies much more than that if you read that due diligence report.
One of the other things, for example, is a general rate application costs almost $3 million every time we do one. That money goes into the rate base. We all pay for that. It’s not seen to be a very efficient process and we want to improve on that. We want to look at how the PUB is structured. We want to be able to make decisions on economic projects like Avalon, like Tamerlane, where we need to make decisions as a government to be able to deal with big business opportunities, things like wholesaling power. Regulatory reform has a much broader basis than just that one narrow issue, and I apologize if that’s the way it appears. Thank you.