Thank you, Madam Chair. There are some good comments on the floor this afternoon. As a new Member, 16 months into the Assembly and going through our first budget process, and everything was thrown at us as a new Member, it was a really big learning curve. I feel that over the 16 months, working with the committees that I’ve had the opportunity to work with, working with governments and also taking a good stance with specifically our Social Programs committee and all the work we’ve been doing and working with other NGOs and other service providers in the Northwest Territories and being able to work and trying to get some of these initiatives and some of the program dollars that they need to run the programs successfully or more efficiently, I think has been pretty successful.
Going back to this specific budget, back in September we had a lot of really good discussion in the committee rooms to get to where we are today, and proving these department by department over the next five weeks. I do share comments made by some other colleagues in terms of where we had expressed some interest to try to get more dollars for better programs and services for people of the Northwest Territories.
I was excited to come into the budget session for these six weeks. Although we did get some things addressed, we felt that in some areas the dollars could have been spent more efficiently and could have been spent in areas of better programs and services, but also getting a few more dollars to make sure that the dollars that we are spending this year are going to be effective in the regions, specifically the Midwifery Program. We are going to be going to a consultant, possibly for the territory. I feel that we do have the reports, we do have the information out there, that we need to hit the ground running, and start providing these services to these expecting families and mothers in the communities so that they can stay at home, have healthy pregnancies without the undue stress of having to be away from home and away from their family,
friends and loved ones over the amount of years. There was a midwifery report that gave a lot of recommendations. We based our discussions around that midwifery report and made our recommendations to government. What we saw out of that I guess it was a little unsatisfactory on some of our parts.
Another area that we really wanted to focus on and we had a really good presentation from NWT Tourism. They did an excellent job in Ottawa during NWT days. They did a great job with the marketing strategy with the amount of dollars that they do have right now, which is very minimal. I believe it is the second lowest budget in all of Canada. In fact, they are competing with other jurisdictions for marketing time and space on TV for programs that are here in the Northwest Territories.
I feel that we need to support our tourism industry so that we can start getting a return on investment for dollars that are put out there. Not only that, this group does an excellent job. They have a great expanded marketing program, a lot of very good measurable outcomes, goals and objectives. It is written on paper already and it is actually on the ITI website as one of their, I think it was their 2012-13 budget, and here we are in ‘13-14 still fighting for dollars for them. It is good to see the $600,000 increase that was mentioned earlier in the budget address and the ongoing $1.2 million here afterwards. I feel the sooner we get them into expanded marketing, into expanded markets, we’re going to see a benefit to the Northwest Territories and to small business and other groups in the NWT that do business up here in the Northwest Territories.
Another big project that I was very happy to see in here, that I do know some of our other Members do have concerns about and have criticized, is the Inuvik-Tuk highway and our look in putting money into that. With the Inuvik-Tuk highway, we have had these discussions over and over. With the decrease in the Arctic sea ice, the Northwest Passage is going to be open. It connects us sea to sea to sea. It creates sovereignty within the North. It is a project that has been on the books since the 1970s and the feds have committed some dollars to it. It’s something that I feel that, from the short time that I’ve been in government, it has been a big practice of theirs.
Just from the reports that we have seen, it is going to create a lot of jobs in Inuvik, Tuktoyaktuk and that whole region for the next four years. If you recall, I think in June or whenever we went through the last business plans, you can see it in the main estimates, and that’s an increase in the income support that we critically see right now in the Beaufort-Delta. We don’t have a lot of economic stability and a lot of economic development going on in the region, so that there’s going to be a
continued increase into the income support that we’re providing to our families, as well as looking at other areas of rental subsidies for people that aren’t in the workforce and need government to look into that. In fact, I’ve see it in my office. I’ve had people come who have had jobs their whole lives and find themselves on tough times, and are actually going in to get their rent paid for them, as well as going on income support, and it’s a hard pill to swallow for them to take that route when they’ve worked their whole lives. So when we work in our regions and our ridings and we see this on a daily basis, it’s hard to look at the debates that we are going to have, but at the same time we’ve got to understand that when we make decisions territorially that it’s not only for our region. Even though we do represent our regions, we’ve got to look at what’s the best interest for all people of the Northwest Territories, and the Inuvik-Tuk highway is one project that’s going to assist with that.
As well as the fibre optic link. It’s going to be an opportunity to collect data from our region and all of the world that other groups are going to want to come and participate in and buy that data, as well as create a fibre optic link down the Mackenzie Valley. It’s going to create better infrastructure for all these communities down the valley, to better education, better health and social services. I’m glad to see that on there, because the sooner we start investing in these kinds of projects, the sooner our people will start to benefit. Just like what we did with the early childhood development funding that we got last year when we had to take a big stance on this side of the House and defer a certain budget to make sure that we got that in there. It’s this government working as a consensus government to say that we do care about our people and we do want to invest in them.
There was a lot of other really good things that I really did see in the budget address that we’re going to see over these main estimates over the next five weeks. Obviously, early childhood development, and a big push always on the mental health and addictions, and that’s another area of where we saw that we could take a big stance. It is our biggest cost-driver in the Department of Health and Social Services. If you combine it with the Department of Justice and the health system, you just need to see where we can start focusing those dollars to better serve our people that are battling those types of addictions.
Another big item that was addressed was the energy initiatives to look into liquid natural gas for Inuvik and finding solutions. Obviously, that’s been a big concern, and there was something in the newspaper today about the fuel that’s being provided right now, the synthetic gas and the energy costs in Inuvik specifically. It’s going to be hard not only on our residents but our business, our small business, and I’m glad to see that there are
some dollars in there. I would like to see a little bit more, to see how we can find solutions so that it does decrease the cost of living for people that I represent in Inuvik, and finding solutions that not only will work for Inuvik, but can be also a building block and a roadmap for other communities that might be going through the same problem, such as Norman Wells.
Although we didn’t get everything that we had asked for during our budget dialogue, I commend the Minister for taking the budget out on the road. In that sense, I just want to see what type of a commitment the Minister made. He did mention that some of what he heard was in line with some of the priorities of the 17th Legislative Assembly. I want to
see the impact that our people in the communities actually had on this budget as we move forward. I’ll be sure to make good connections with not only the leaders in Inuvik and the Beaufort-Delta region but my constituency and my riding in the community of Inuvik to see what was said, and work with the budget report as well as the main estimates as we go through them. Thank you, Madam Chair.