Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My opening comments on the budget this year, as I indicated in the House before, my concern with the escalation of our operating expenses, over the last 10 years we’ve seen our budget double in the 10-12 years since division. Our population hasn’t grown anywhere near that. I know we have lots of demands, especially from this side of the House, on things we need to do, but we need to curb some of that spending as well.
When we were discussing the issue of our borrowing limit, one of the indicators I had indicated was the budget at that time was $1.2 billion and we need to find $500 million, or $50 million and that would represent only about 5 percent of the budget. I would still urge that we look to find cutting wherever possible and try to reduce that cost.
It seems like when we look at the numbers, the numbers are escalating and continue to grow every year. Most of the departments that we’ve looked at through the business plan are all growing. If they’re not growing it’s basically because the program’s
being cut. That’s one of the areas of concern that I have. Some of the things I think we need to do is do some of the projects, but do them a little smarter, do them a little differently.
One of the other areas during the business plan and through this budget that I’m going to question is some of the positions and whether those positions need to be decentralized, moved to the regions wherever possible. I do believe that decentralization has to begin, and we talked about devolution being one of the ways to decentralize the government, but I think it needs to be a moving cart that we throw devolution on to. That if we don’t have some of that happening before devolution, at the time we’re going to find more difficulties for some of these communities to take on positions, whether they have capacity or office space or residential space. We have to start doing some of the groundwork for those positions of devolution to go out to the regions.
I think one of the areas that one of my colleagues from Hay River mentioned in some of the meetings was we talked about the review office, and one of the only rare recommendations was to add another office space to Yellowknife. I’d like to see that office or that review office become more of an office to look at decentralization, where in government, where in the different departments we can decentralize positions, areas of different departments. Have blocks of people, two, three, five, 10, depending on the size and capacity of the community, to move some of those positions out there. I do believe that decentralization will improve the Northwest Territories completely. As those regions strengthen, Yellowknife will strengthen. I know that we need to encourage some of the bureaucracy to do some of that. As we see those reasons get stronger and employment get increased, we won’t see the demands on Yellowknife that we are currently experiencing from the migration from the small communities to the large communities, and some of that is mainly because that’s where the jobs are right there in Yellowknife. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy; if that’s where the jobs are, that’s where people are going to move to because most people want to have a job, want an income, want to provide for their families. I think it’s an area we need to review.
One of the positions that we’ve asked and talked about is a permafrost position in ITI. They’ve indicated to us that it’s cheaper to do it in Yellowknife as opposed to farther north, but some of those positions I think there’s a bigger activity in permafrost and some of the studies can be done in a northern region.
Some of those are going to be questioned whether those positions need to be there or whether that additional expense is worth it. If there are additional expenses, is there actually more of an additional
benefit to the region, as well, if we have one or two additional positions farther north? Do they have a bigger impact than adding one or two or five or six more positions into Yellowknife? It barely will even be noticed in the economy, but in the smaller communities and in the regions those positions are noticed greatly.
That’s my opening comments for the business plan, or the budget here. Thank you very much.