Thank you, Madam Chair. Welcome to the finance delegation here today in the committee. I do commend the department for a prudent fiscal strategy in terms of tightening the belt for the upcoming year. I do have some concerns in areas such as health. Those are areas in which we’ve got to be a little bit more careful in terms of the term “tightening.”
I think health is one of those areas where you have to make investments ongoing, otherwise you fall behind, I guess, the total plan of healing people. Making the proper investments in the community in terms of all types of infrastructure, I think, are critical for the health and well-being of the Northwest Territories.
That said, I think we’ve also heard from some of the Members here, some of the concerns with population migration and changes in migration patterns for the people of the Northwest Territories. When we get to the area of MACA, and when we do funding formulas, that will be something I know we’ll bring up again, but I just wanted to say from a global perspective, a number of Members are concerned that population changes may have not been factored as effectively as we planned in the 2013 budget. This repopulation exercise would help, I guess, in the re-profiling of I know what the government uses as a needs assessment. I think this has a true reflection of the population. I know the NWTAC has been very supportive of that action as well. I just wanted to put that on the record, Madam Chair.
As the Member for Frame Lake indicated, we’ve seen less carry-over from the federal funding from years past because of a large increase in the year before, and I commend the department for becoming a bit more aggressive on that. I know it’s a lot of work to look at matching federal funds to current funding and then to have enough people to deploy the much needed projects around the Territories, but I do commend them for bringing that number down.
That said, the highways, as mentioned, you know, our colleague from Nahendeh, Highway No. 7 is near and dear to his heart, and I think through attrition it’s near and dear to everybody’s heart here, only because we do feel for the Member and the people of that area. That said, we also have many other highways across the Northwest Territories which are in fairly dire situations or dire needs, and I think the current strategy is really not keeping up with what I think the people of the Northwest Territories are expecting. I’m talking about a safety issue as well as the trickling down effect to tourism as well.
I’m hoping that, as indicated, and we’ve heard from senior management here in the Department of Transportation, of a Highway Strategy. We really need to encourage and foster that environment, because without a strategy it would be very, very difficult to start adding more infrastructure strategy or dollars without that fundamental in place.
As mentioned by some of my other colleagues, the Inuvik-Tuk highway expansion program is one in which I think has been looked at, and again, many of us do support the principle of the highway for many reasons, and I’m one of them, but I’m also very concerned about the funding and how we’re going to afford it. I think the more we talk about it as a government, the more we are able to discuss this with the people of the Northwest Territories, the more we can understand the financial impact of what this will have on everybody. I think it’s a prudent exercise and I know there was probably a good reason for omitting it here in the capital plan, but we know it’s going to come back this year and many Members are just hoping that it would be part of the overall picture.
Lastly, we are very encouraged to see devolution or the components of devolution well underway. Many Members here have great faith in our Premier and his delegation team and we’re very happy to have a number of recent organizations come on board, and I think we see a true value moving forward. The concern I think I have as a Member is with devolution will trigger decentralization, which will go hand in hand, which would include also the planning for tomorrow, and that includes infrastructure for putting these people in communities and infrastructure projects, and I’m not sure if this budget is truly planning for the number of jobs that we’ll be seeing going to the communities in a way in which, I think, would provide that comfort level. I think, you know, I speak not just from Yellowknife’s perspective but I think from all communities, having a very clear plan of action as devolution is on a very good platform and a very good timeline, but 2013 should trigger some of this decentralization to start occurring and I’m hoping that we can get some comments to that.
Madam Chair, I’ll leave it at that. I do have more specifics as we get into the detail. Thank you very much.