Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. The Minister has the much touted “hold the line” budget. One of the things that the hold the line budget does is, when you start concentrating on big ticket projects, it impacts the delivery of projects to the smaller regions and communities. But I just want to say upfront, high on my agenda would be the highways, particularly Highway No. 7, Trout Lake school.
However, I wanted to discuss a little bit about new and emerging issues, and that’s the oil and gas development that’s happening up in the Sahtu. It definitely impacts my region. I also feel that despite success with NWT Days, we lost an opportunity to lobby government in saying that impact funding is needed for this region and my region. There’s much to be done. We’re allocating, I think the Minister said, $1.2 million to assist the Sahtu. But what the federal government has done with other regions such as Voisey’s Bay, Churchill Falls is they’ve actually contributed with the impact and training of those regions. With a great lobbying effort, we could double, triple or even quadruple funding that we have to assist with the development there, most particularly the infrastructure.
There’s a huge opportunity for the Mackenzie Valley Highway starting north of Wrigley. I’ve always said some other regions get their special projects and I think it’s about time we started looking at the Mackenzie Valley. It doesn’t mean we have to take away from other regions. It just means that we just have to continue focusing, and with the investment from the federal government, we can certainly look at developing a Mackenzie Valley Highway.
I know that project descriptions are almost done from Wrigley right up to even Good Hope, I believe. So we’ve got a lot of the work done, so we can certainly make a business case. We should continue our lobbying efforts in Ottawa. In fact, we are working with Mr. Yakeleya. We will be working together over the next couple of weeks advancing this idea forward and, I believe, it should also be a priority of our government, only because it’s a new and emerging issue. Nothing we could have foreseen a couple of years ago.
The cost of living continues to be pressing in my smaller communities. Most particularly during my last tour, we were talking about the cost of fuel. The government controls the price of fuels in the small and remote communities. They are asking me, how can you approach government. What’s the best way you can reduce the cost of living when it comes to fuel? I guess one of the ideas that I had is that somehow, if we subsidize the cost of delivery, that would go a long way. I don’t know if that can be done right away, but I think we should work on that. We often say that devolution and extra funding is going to help a lot of different program areas, so I think if we can recover the cost of deliveries to the small communities, then the fuel will be almost $2 per litre. It’s only because in the smaller communities, these people use it on a day-to-day basis. They are out on the land, out in the boat, out on their skidoos. They need this gas to sustain themselves.
I want to focus on the health centre replacement for Fort Simpson. A planning study is coming up this
fiscal year and I’ve already heard that when we replaced the health care centre in Fort Simpson, we are going to reduce long-term care beds again. So I’m looking at my colleague Mr. Bouchard who, right from day one, has said we’ve lost 10 long-term care beds in this new health facility and, potentially, I hope I don’t. I’ve been asking the appropriate Minister for more information on the planning studies, because I don’t want to lose these long-term health care beds. In today’s questioning, I think the Minister told Mr. Bouchard that we’ve got spaces for them, but if you are reducing, potentially, up to 20 beds, where are all these people going? Are you going to build a long-term care facility somewhere? I would like to know where all these long-term care beds are going.
I think the point of power is in the moment, Mr. Chair. If you are planning these health care facilities, just spend that little bit of extra money and continue with long-term care beds in the community. Hay River is an example now. They have to go through the capital planning process and somehow add 10 more long-term care beds to their facilities. I’m not too sure about government’s infinite wisdom on planning. Everybody knows that statistically we’ve got an aging population and we’ve got to plan for seniors.
While I’m on health, and during my last tour as well, Mr. Chair, community wellness plans are being developed by all my smaller communities. They are really well done. The community works hard on it. I know that the departments have worked hard in developing the community wellness plans, but they are saying it’s good to have a plan, but let’s resource them. I think, for example, the community of Trout Lake is saying, I think we had $18,000 in the past to deliver community wellness. I keep saying that at least 30 or 40 percent of those costs are for travel. Trout Lake is a fly-in-only community and you are using a lot of your money for travel expenses, getting people in there. That’s what they’re saying. We have this great plan; well, you have to resource us.
I know that we increased the Health and Social Services budget in prevention and promotion. I’d like to ensure that these programming dollars get to the communities. It has been said in the media and in this House, we have great programming, but let’s make sure we spend the dollars and get them out to the communities. I think we often see we will develop a nice big program, but then we’ll create a job, often in Yellowknife. Out of a $400,000 program, you are creating a $160,000 job position in Yellowknife and then you cut your potential programming dollars right down to 60 percent almost. We have to deliver our programs, spend the programming dollars in the communities.
Finally, in conclusion, I mentioned devolution as well. As we continue our planning with devolution
and continue our discussion, we have to create infrastructure in the regions and in the communities so that we can continue on with decentralization. I am a firm believer in it and we can do it. I know in the past, like in the community of Fort Simpson, departments have actually said, well, we wanted to give you a couple more jobs but there is no housing or office space there, we have to start planning for that, we have to build another office space in Yellowknife. That’s going to be their argument: there is no office space in Simpson, but we have lots in Yellowknife. Those are the things we have to be aware of and pay attention to. I would like to see that continued to be involved in devolution and planning for decentralization. I won’t be doing my job as MLA if I’m not trying to get resources out to the communities, decentralization and jobs out to the communities. Thank you.