Thank you, Madam Chair. I find myself well aligned with Mr. Dolynny’s comments. The Minister says we’ve been fiscally responsible. I’m going on my sixth year and it seems like every year we find ourselves more in debt despite increasing the debt and taking into account the redefinition of debt. We’ve made some really unfathomable decisions on big, costly infrastructure projects that really don’t have an economic return. We seem bent on continuing that sort of bizarre decision-making.
I’m just going to go through the budget address by way of helping to focus my comments, if that’s helpful at all for people who might want to follow me.
I note the mineral exploration grew 44 percent in 2012. I frequently hear that’s not happening. In fact, it’s grown now over a four-year period. Despite the Minister’s portrayal of austerity and so on, and many of the economic indices as being negative, in fact, they are positive in many cases. Just a comment.
I am a bit perplexed that, given the absence in our growth in our human population and the increase in our revenues, that’s portrayed in a very negative way. I would say people around the world would be very happy if they had the same number of people and revenues were increasing. I guess it’s that slavish commitment to growth is the only way to be healthy.
Again, the Minister has portrayed austerity for the people and luxury for big enterprise that likes to build roads and bridges. I can’t agree with that and I don’t think that’s the sort of things we want closing down services to our people and so on, or failing to provide the necessary services while we spend money on these big non-economic pieces of infrastructure. The statement in line with that, we will not use revenues from non-renewable resources to fund government programs and services is, to me, just a further commitment of luxury treatment for big industry and austerity for our people. We know, and will be talking about all the services that are… In fact what the Minister is referring to here is roads and bridges. We have so much infrastructure which has just been discussed, building infrastructure that needs attention and is part and parcel of our services. I do not support that.
The $1.15 million, I was happy to see that in A Shared Path Towards Wellness: A Mental Health and Addictions Action Plan and I’d like to hear more that explains exactly how that will address the Justice’s concerns about what mental health services are needed before they can support a mental health court, which I believe this
government is committed to and recognizes the need for.
Concern regarding effective spending of early childhood dollars, I have expressed, already, concerns about that. We approved dollars a year ago and, apparently, at least some of them were not spent until very recently. This means inefficient spending when we try and spend a whole year’s budget in the last few weeks of the fiscal year. That may be more pervasive than just early childhood.
Midwifery, glad to see some money there. I think it’s not sufficient and it’s not focused at putting programs on the ground, so I know we’re going to be having more discussion on that.
I appreciate the recognition of service needs for our seniors and the growing proportion of people who are seniors in our population. In fact, we do need both staffing of facilities and more infrastructure there.
I was very pleased to see the commitment come forward with supplementary appropriation to meet the requirements to implement an Anti-Poverty Strategy if and when we get there. I’m anticipating that will be fairly soon.
The Minister noted an investment of $1.2 million to help Northerners capture the benefits of Sahtu oil and gas exploration. This is the first in a long list, and I’ll tell you how far we’re going to stretch this $1.2 million. We’re going to capture the benefits. We’re going to mitigate the associated impacts. We’re going to fund career development. We’re going to fund training programs. We’re going to support local businesses. Still with the same $1.2 million. We’re also going to fund the collection of additional environmental baseline data for groundwater, surface water, and wildlife and environmental assessments and permitting, and increase resources for monitoring oil and gas activities. That’s not the end of the list for this $1.2 million. We’re also going to provide for additional RCMP resources. The Victim Services Programs. Again, my point is, recognizing what is happening in the Sahtu, the $1.2 million will hardly be noticeable. What else are we going to do to meet that need? Where are the federal dollars? What are we doing to bring those in?
We do need to commit to mitigating the high cost of energy but I’d sooner reduce the high cost of energy. I note we are subsidizing again fossil fuel energy, $9.4 million just in this one fund alone for electricity rates. It’s less than last year, at least. I think that was $17 million. My point has always been that we should take the reduction from year to year over the next few years, and put those into energy infrastructures and programs that actually reduce the cost of living. I still don’t see that happening.
An extra $523,000 to support transboundary water negotiations. Again, we have sailed the amount dedicated to this every year for the last several years. We are now over millions of dollars. I’m just wondering when we’re going to stop, especially given that we don’t have any authority in this area. Recognizing, at the same time, that there is good work happening here. I think the Minister talks about living within our means and I think that’s one area where we’re rapidly approaching if not have surpassed our means.
Very happy to see the $700,000 for energy-efficient wood pellet boilers in public housing units, although I note that is included in the energy initiatives, and in fact this means that other programs are being put into that and actual energy initiatives are declining.
I mean, just looking at diamonds alone, $2 billion worth non-renewable resources shipped out of the Northwest Territories. That’s greater than our annual budget by far. I’m assuming that we should be able to make a donation to the Heritage Fund for future generations. So I will look forward to that. I haven’t been able to look at the budget to see whether that’s there, so I would appreciate knowing how much we will be contributing this year. Given the $2 billion and other resources, it obviously should be significant.
Finally, I see in the conclusion the Minister mentioned early childhood development again. I appreciate that mention. I think that is recognized as a real priority of the 16th and 17th Assemblies.
I’m looking forward to an early childhood framework coming forward and identifying dollars that we need to put into that and going for those through our supplementary appropriation.
My last comment on the Inuvik-Tuk highway is amazingly profiled here as a “critical, major infrastructure.” I don’t know how this could possibly be portrayed with the words “critical, major infrastructure.” There is no business case for this road. It is clearly a politically motivated project. It is the farthest thing from critical. We heard some discussion of infrastructure that actually is critical, such as our medical infrastructure and our highway system, existing highway system, that is falling apart. We are unable to entertain maintenance of it given our continual redirection of dollars into new projects.
That’s all the general comments I have. I look forward to any response.