Thank you, Madam Chair. I’ll try to keep this short, seeing the time we have left and we want to get into Human Resources here. I just want to mention a few comments based on what was mentioned yesterday and what was before us.
It is mentioned in here that we have to make tough decisions and sometimes those tough decisions are based on the facts, the stats, all the reports and recommendations that come before us as we sit in committee and as we bring things down here on the
floor. Sometimes those don’t always seem to be addressed.
Looking at what was said in here, a couple of things really caught my attention. The first one, first and foremost obviously, is going to be our Inuvik gas situation and the depletion of that. It’s going to be a harsh reality, and as I mentioned in my Member’s statement the first session here, it’s something that’s going to be really affecting not only Inuvik but it’s going to have a rippling affect right across the Northwest Territories. I did mention that you just have to walk into the local post office in Inuvik to see how many local houses are up for sale already. You don’t know if those are professionals, teachers, health professionals, people we need. We already have a depletion of resources on hand.
Not only are we going to be possibly losing our professional staff but businesses are going to be taking a big hit, if they haven’t been hit already with the low economy that we see before.
With that said, there is a page here on the economy and it looks great on paper. It looks like the NWT’s doing awesome, but it doesn’t take anybody, it doesn’t take a whole lot when you go to the communities and see a lack of jobs, a lack of opportunities and a lack of work for our contractors. It looks good on paper that our economy is doing well, but in reality it’s not. Look at the income assistance that we have that is increasing in the Northwest Territories. That reflects on the people not being able to work. People can’t find work. Contractors have to take that route because there are no jobs out there in the regions. Sure, some of our regions are doing really well; however, a lot of our other regions are suffering the impacts.
Going back to the businesses, they’re going to have to recoup their costs somehow. Especially the bigger ones that provide a greater service, they are going to have to recoup their costs. They’re going to increase the prices for their goods and services which in turn is going to reflect back on the residents who already have a high cost of living. It’s going to put a lot of people in poverty and that’s something that I don’t want to see while I’m in this government and I’m sure nobody wants to see in their communities. In Inuvik we’ve got just a particular situation where it doesn’t look very promising and I know we’re going to be moving forward in trying to find some solutions. Hopefully those solutions can be looked at that would have a positive impact on Inuvik which would decrease the effects across the Northwest Territories.
With that said, I just wanted to touch base on this rent supplement for market families. There is 1.2. As we get into the details I’m going to try to see what that program is, because the high cost of living and things that have been in the Northwest Territories. For instance, it’s cheaper to buy a house in Yellowknife than to rent now because it’s
such a high cost of living. It’s industry that’s setting those costs because things are flourishing here in Yellowknife and a lot of people are moving here.
Then mentioned later, the economic development, the increase of addictions that have been taking. Alcohol and drug abuse, there’s a budget for $276,000 to develop a strategy. When we’re pretty well at status quo running the same program when we don’t even have programs to reflect this but we’re going to try to come out with a strategy that it says here, Community Safety Strategy. We already got the Mental Health and Addictions Strategy that’s going to be tabled this session. Some of these dollars could probably be better spent doing the action rather than developing another strategy. When I talked earlier about making tough decisions, the PRO office, the program review office, does a lot of work and gives us a lot of recommendations and it’s our job to take those recommendations and put them into place so that this government saves money so that money is more efficiently spent across the departments for the departments that really need it. The Auditor General’s report, we get that on a regular basis and how often do we reflect the Auditor General’s report that tells us how much money we could be saving that could be going into other programs. Just some simple suggestions and if we start following some of these recommendations, we could start having a little bit better impact on how we deliver our services and programs, what we invest in, so that at the end of the day this government can say we spent the money the best way we could in quality services and efficient services and it’s something that would reflect right across the board.
A couple things. There was that $818 million that the Minister spoke of yesterday when he was talking about education and early childhood development to one of my colleagues here. That was for health, education and justice. As we go through the business planning sessions throughout this week, we’ll go through the details and see how we can efficiently spend those dollars. I mean the more that I read in this government, the more that I see there are areas that we can improve on. The program review office gave us a lot of recommendations. The Auditor General’s report gave us a lot of recommendations, specifically in the area of education, as well as housing. We can look at those as we move through in the business planning session and see how we can better efficiently spend our dollars and take those recommendations so that we’re not overly spending on programs that we can improve on.
The RCMP violence coordinator, I was really happy to see that. However, with the level of problems that we have in the Northwest Territories it would almost be better to have more than just one coordinator, because with the issues that we’re seeing across the Northwest Territories, one coordinator, kind of
like the midwife that we had in Yellowknife last year who got over-exhausted dealing with all the issues and they didn’t get the support that they need. It looks great that we’re getting one, but what I can see is over-exhaustion and quality of services possibly decreasing.
Once again, I’m glad to see the Inuvik-Tuk highway highlighted in here. Any of my colleagues here, Members that want to see a region that’s really suffering from this economic downturn just have to come up to Inuvik, Tuk, the Beaufort-Delta region and see how bad of an impact. There are no jobs up there. To see a big project like this, one that this government is looking into is something that we should seriously look at and create some jobs and get people off the income support.
Early childhood programs, prevention, promotion, once again when we get into the details of that big budget we’ll look into that.
There were also some monies here for health care facilities. In the stats, we see that the elder population is increasing and will continue to increase, but there’s no talk of long-term – well, there’s talk of long-term care facilities in certain regions but not across the whole Northwest Territories. When we’re putting $30 million into health care facilities, I think it’s a great opportunity to look at long-term care beds as well as beds for other mental health issues. Once again, mental health can go into that, but we’ll get into the detail as we go through that big budget.
We’re in a government where I know it’s tough to put a budget of this magnitude together with so many different departments and so many responsibilities and nobody wants to lose the programs that they’re delivering. We have to find a way where we can kind of audit our own government to see which programs are really being successful, which ones aren’t, how we can work together both as Members and Cabinet and how Cabinets can work together as departments to better spend their money and move forward. It comes down to tough decisions and obviously nobody wants to lose out any dollars out of their department, nobody wants to lose any jobs in our communities, but where some regions are flourishing, others are suffering. We talk about fairness in this government and we have another over three years to look at those corrections, look at those suggestions, recommendations, and move forward and start looking at our communities as being the backbone of this territory and not just the capital of the Northwest Territories. Thank you, Madam Chair.