Thank you, Mr. Chair. My comments are in no particular order and they don’t necessarily merit a response, but they will also reflect many of the concerns of other Members who’ve already spoken and who will speak after me.
I want to start by talking about the amount of money that we are going to be using, $15.6 million, according to the Minister, to offset the NWT Power Corporation’s rate increase that’s upcoming. I’m all for reducing my power bills. Lord knows I don’t want to pay more for my power than anybody else does. I think that our cost of living, whether it be here in Yellowknife or elsewhere, is already high enough. But my concern is that we are providing a subsidy to our residents and not, at the same time, looking at how we can reduce the reliance that we have on fossil fuels.
The Minister further stated in the budget address that we need to reduce reliance on environmentally unfriendly and costly diesel-generated power. And,
absolutely, I agree with that statement, but I don’t see much evidence of it in the budget. We have reduced the amount of money that we’re spending on energy projects considerably. We in the last Assembly had $60 million over four years that we put into energy projects. We don’t have that in this budget and I think it’s a step backwards. There’s some money in here but there’s certainly not enough. I don’t see the emphasis in this budget that should be there to get us off fossil fuels. The only way that we’re going to reduce our cost of living adequately is to get us off fossil fuels.
I am somewhat concerned that there is no money in this budget earmarked for implementation of the Midwifery Program. I realize that it’s a fairly big change and there’s a fairly large amount of money. There are verbal statements that it’s an important program, but I don’t see that we have money in this budget that’s going to allow us to implement or even to start with the beginnings of an implementation of the Midwifery Program from the report which came out in the last little while.
I’m more than a little concerned about the livelihood of our sport hunter outfitters, particularly one or two in Yellowknife who have managed to survive thanks to the contributions through the Sport Hunter Outfitter Marketing Program, but the budget indicates that that’s reduced this year, and that’s not helpful. My question – I guess this is a definite question to the Minister – is: When are we going to allow our sport hunt outfitters to have access to caribou tags? There have been some changes in the number of caribou and in the counts and so on and we’re allowing certain organizations to have access to tags, but we’re not allowing our outfitters to have access to tags, and I fear that we are going to lose some of our businesses. They’re not going to be able to survive for much longer without those tags.
I have concerns, as many of my colleagues do, about the Inuvik-Tuk highway. It’s a huge project and it’s not necessarily in this budget, but again, it is going to impact our budgets as we go forward, and certainly, it’s going to take man hours in terms of staff and so on. It’s a project that is not fully formed yet and yet we’re spending all kinds of money on it.
I am somewhat concerned, we have a reduction, I believe, in MACA for a minimal amount of money, but some money for municipal emergency response. Without that money I think our municipalities are going to be struggling, particularly the ones that are on the highway system and that have to respond to emergencies out on the highway. Communities are now doing that at their own expense and there needs to be some opportunity for communities to be able to provide that service, because it’s a necessary service, and
we expect them to do it but we don’t provide any funding to them to do it.
Along with that, we’ve had a recent indication that in terms of flooding, for instance, there’s money through the federal government for emergencies with flooding, but that, in my mind, in terms of MACA, we could provide for an emergency response fund which could be used either for accidents out on the highway or for such things as dealing with mitigation of flooding.
Like my colleagues, I feel that we should be putting money into the Heritage Fund, and I am dismayed to see that there is no indication in this budget. The Minister stated earlier that we will not be putting any money into the Heritage Fund in this fiscal year. I note that this budget identifies a $74 million surplus, and I know that is intended for capital expenditures, but it would, in my mind, be a simple matter to take $500,000, $250,000 out of that $74 million surplus and put it into the Heritage Fund. It’s a small amount of money. I don’t quite understand why we’d have to borrow to put money in there when we’re ending up with a surplus. I think that it would put an action to the words from the Minister that he feels this Heritage Fund is important. We have to start, and I think we’re better off to start now than to wait for devolution. That could be 10 years down the road. I hope not, but it’s feasible that it could be.
I note that we’re expanding the single-window services centres, and I’m really pleased to see that. My understanding is that the service centres we have now are working extremely well and I’m glad that we’re expanding that program. I think that’s going to be a really good move and I think all of our communities are going to benefit from that.
I note that in the budget we have identification of $137,000 for an RCMP family violence coordinator, and that seems to be in response to the Family Violence Action Plan recommendations. But there were 19 recommendations for part three of that Family Violence Action Plan, and this $137,000 does not go anywhere to meeting those 19 recommendations. I’m very concerned that we will not be advancing our work on family violence to any great degree. Having an RCMP officer is great, but we need to be doing more than that.
I, too, am concerned about the amount of money that we’re putting into prevention in the Department of Health and Social Services particularly with regard to mental health and addictions. We, again, pay lip service to the fact that we have this problem. We recognize this problem all across the territory, but where are we putting the money where our mouth is. I really feel that this is an area that we must put a greater emphasis on, and to put a greater emphasis on, in my mind, we have to put more money into it.
With Education, Culture and Employment, I am somewhat dismayed that we don’t have a greater
focus on early childhood development. It’s happening but it’s happening very slowly. I appreciate that it’s happening. It is going to be a good thing, but I think, again, we should be putting a bit more money into that area of ECE than what we are.
I, too, am dismayed that there’s no new revenue source in the budget. I feel really strongly that we should not be waiting. I don’t necessarily believe we should be taxing residents, but I do believe there’s an opportunity for us to get back some of the royalty resources which are flowing rapidly out of here and never coming back. I think some sort of a corporate tax of some sort is definitely doable, and I’m sorry to see that we haven’t got it in this fiscal year.
Lastly, just to follow up on the comment that Mr. Dolynny made about evaluation and so on, it’s been my belief for quite some time – and I have to shake my head every time I hear about this within this government – but I don’t believe you should implement any new program or service unless it comes with an evaluation framework or an evaluation plan. I have seen too often in my brief time here that we put a program in place and about a year or two later somebody asks whether or not it’s working and nobody knows because there’s no evaluation framework or there’s no evaluation plan attached to that program or service. So that’s kind of a general comment, but it’s extremely important that in order for us to know what we’re doing is successful, we have to evaluate it. If we haven’t got any way to evaluate it, we’re just doing stuff and throwing money at it. We don’t have any money to throw around, in my mind.
That’s the end of my remarks. Thank you, Mr. Chair.