Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I do want to thank Ms. Bisaro for bringing this motion for discussion in the House here. I think the timing is right in terms of creating an ombudsman office here in the Northwest Territories. It is an office that would be independent from the government, at arm’s length. It will have the powers to look into matters and issues on behalf of our people, and it will have the powers of, hopefully, the full scope of the government services that we provide. It will be centred around people much like our jobs here in the Assembly.
I see this office here having a lot of visibility for our people, being accessible to the people in the Northwest Territories and that it will focus around resolving issues, differences and finding solutions and being very proactive.
Mr. Speaker, 45 years ago, Alberta was the first government to get an ombudsman office. This issue has been raised three times in the Legislative Assembly through Members’ statements, one in 2007, 2009, and 2010. Our sister neighbouring to the west of us, the Yukon government, has an ombudsman office. That office runs about $500,000, just a little over. It is a powerful office. Again, it can handle complaints from the administration of our government, and I see this as being very, very powerful because it will look at the accountability issue and how we can be accountable to our people, especially to our elders.
I looked at the pros of this office here and it gives us an access point. Right now, as MLAs we are the access point to our government, and we are sometimes swamped with work on a 24/7 basis, and that’s fair, that’s a given. That’s the job that we asked for and that’s the job we accept. Also, we need help. Sometimes a creation of an ombudsman to us would be a godsend support for us. I look at it as we know where to sometimes tell people where they can look for help, besides us, but if they have an ombudsman office, people know where to go. There is a place. For us, we can say, well, go to this
department or this department, but sometimes it gets quite confusing. So we ask that this motion be supported so people then know where to go, and at the office they will tell them what can be done. They also can help us as MLAs and they can be a proactive approach.
Like I said, I looked at the pros and the cons, and one of them is the cost of this creation. This is a huge budget and the Minister has been preaching to us about the fiscal responsibility and we need to look at and take that into serious consideration. We need to weigh out the benefits and the cons of this office, and we have to look at the cost of this office here. I mean, certainly, we need to do this here. Like I said, the office outweighs the cons, so I’m fully supportive of this ombudsman office on this motion and I hope this motion does get implemented. I thank the mover, Ms. Bisaro, for bringing it to the floor. I fully support this motion.