Thank you, Madam Chair. My points I am going to be speaking on this afternoon are going to be around the way we do our operations as a government. As we’re well aware, the federal government gives the territorial government, the people of the Northwest Territories, about 75 percent of funding to do our own operations. We have not yet grown up enough for them. We need to do our own work to be fully accountable for our own spending and for the raising of our own money and operating as an independent, strong government. We still rely on the federal government for funds to operate our programs and services in the Northwest Territories.
From the other 30 percent of our budget, we raise our revenue through our own taxes and fees, et cetera. At the end of the day, we have about a $1.3 billion budget that we’re talking about today for our operational expenses.
We serve over 33 communities that have various needs. Some of the needs are greater than others for reasons such as some of the communities don’t have all-weather roads into their centres. Some regions don’t have the economic stimuli that we see that other regions have. There are many factors that impact expenditures in our communities.
We as MLAs all bring our own wish list to the Legislative Assembly, and through this budget process we bring our needs of the people to this Assembly. That’s the fine art of balancing our needs and our people’s needs with the government’s needs.
The government, through the bureaucracy, has a system where they would look at programs and services that we’re asking for to serve our people. Sometimes the policy doesn’t quite meet the exact needs that we want to have in our communities.
They also have to look at their own infrastructure. We heard the other day, Madam Chair, how much money it’s going to require just to update, maintain and build our infrastructure in the Northwest Territories.
So I wanted to say that when we sit on this side of the table as MLAs, we go through this process with the Minister and various Ministers to put our priorities on the table and look at how we can meet the needs of our people in our communities.
Cabinet also sits on the other side and it goes through its own process with their own deputies and directors asking what the government needs. We try to come up with a balance to say yes, this
budget we can live with. Our needs are always higher than our revenue coming in. The Minister is well aware that one of the solutions to our dilemma and taking charge of our own destiny, we’ve said it privately and publicly, that devolution is one vehicle that we can use in the future for helping ourselves.
I talked a little bit about the situation in Norman Wells. Depending on which side of the table you’re sitting on, there’s a lot of TB going on there in that area, the Tulita district. We certainly can look at situations like that that haven’t been planned for. Just like the Norman Wells natural gas situation with Imperial turning the taps off in 2013 and then finally in 2014. We know the situation; we know the challenges to help our people deal with that situation. The government, for us in our communities, we see them being there to support us. We need to look at some of these policies in the budget where they support the people. We know our jails are overcrowded and 90 percent of those in jail it’s due to alcohol. It’s clearly written in the judges’ sentencing, in RCMP reports and it’s known in our communities that these people are in jail because of alcohol. It even shows up in our liquor revenue charts that we, in the North, we drink. We drink a lot. In Sahtu last year we drank $2.1 million of liquor sales, booze. It’s known there.
We need to take a step back and say this is what we need to do. We need to get to the people and let the people know we are hearing them. We need to continue to be connected to them. We need to know that this government is going to look at dealing with this issue in a comprehensive, cross-departmental way. We’re too small to think like we’re in Ottawa. We are only 19 MLAs. We need to look at the communities and say this is what we need to do to help you.
Sometimes we hear we can’t do this, we can’t do this. That kind of thinking has to go. The thinking that we can say what can we do to help you, how can we help you, that’s what we need to hear from the government policies, the appeals, the process.
The Minister talked about a $74 million surplus. I hope that’s an opportunity for us to sit around and see how we can help our communities, such as emergency funding. We should be there when there’s flooding. Departments need to be there for the people, not for themselves or the government system that we’ve set up. If we’re responsible for that, then we’re responsible for changing that. It means we might get bit in the hand, but we’ve got to do something.
So I want to raise that, Madam Chair, that we need to look at some of the first things first and addiction is a big one in my community. A lot of good people out there know the harms of it, the destructive behaviour and they want to get out of it, but we need the government to help us. In our budget we give about 45 percent of our funding to the
communities through contributions and grants. We sometimes treat our communities the way the Government of Canada treats the territorial government. It just filters down.
Madam Chair, I hope through this budget process that the Minister and Ministers have some understanding, flexibility where we need to make some changes and connect back to the people. Sometimes the system is not quite understandable for our people. I think that the Minister has some things in here that I like. I was hoping we would hear a little more on some things in the Sahtu and that there are some other things in play that would maybe satisfy me to say yes, we can do this budget this year. It’s all about trust. I trust the Cabinet with what they say they are going to do and see where we need to make some change. We have a lot of work ahead of us, Madam Chair, and I look forward to going through this process with the Minister. Mahsi.