Thank you, Mr. Chair. I’d like to welcome the Minister and his dream team of finance expertise here. I want to commend, I mean I know what it takes to put a budget together and this is not an easy endeavour. Albeit this is not the biggest budget we’ve seen in the House, this is still a fairly significant budget with respect to the public’s money.

I’m going to keep my comments somewhat general, but I want to make sure that they’re taken in the context as is being delivered, and it’s important that it is being taken in the context delivered. You may hear, and you’ve heard maybe some overlap and some of the same concerns that Members have here. We’re hoping that those comments do not get lost in the shuffle and that these comments need to be taken to heart.

I think the first comment that I think is critical is that we keep hearing that this is a budget of the 17th Assembly, and I want to stress again, this is not the budget of the 17th Assembly. This is the

government’s budget and Members have input on it. Albeit it feels at times less input, but this is not my budget. This is your budget and it’s critical that if there are issues with your budget, we need to make a clear indication where there’s opportunity, and you hear different variances of that depending on the Members that you have here, the different needs of the community. But I don’t want to water down what those needs are. Those needs are critical. I do support whether it’s infrastructure in the Sahtu, Beau-Del, Deh Cho, these are all important and they’re important to Members, and they’re important to all Members on this side of the House.

That being said, there are a couple of key areas to which I just want to take a moment to address in general format and I’ll be looking forward to dealing with the individual items in detail. One of the observations, especially with deferred maintenance, is the fact that a lot of Members feel that deferred maintenance is a growing issue. It’s something

we’ve got to do, we understand that, but the cycle is becoming larger, it’s almost perpetuating and items are deteriorating at a faster rate. Whether we’re catching them in time is something that we really want to put an emphasis on the department to maybe keep Members more in tune what’s coming up on the horizon so we don’t have surprises. I think that’s probably the biggest question there.

The other thing is the fact that when we deal with a budget, it would be very nice to have what I refer to as one budget, not one budget here and an appropriation here and, well, we’ve got something coming in a few weeks here and, oh, by the way, we forgot about this here. It’s very, very confusing to understand the overall arching issue of a budget when a budget is not all inclusive so that all capital amounts are put in place. So I strongly encourage the finance team, in conjunction with the deputy ministers and Ministers, to come up with one budget when we’re doing this process, and not having well, we don’t have all the pieces of the puzzle here, but we’ll bring it in in a couple of months. It’s extremely hard to follow the money when that occurs. It’s also extremely hard… If we’re having a hard time following money, I can assure that the general public, who have a reasonable degree of watching what we’re doing here, would also have an extremely hard time watching the money. It’s about transparency and I think we owe it to the public purse to be as transparent, open and less confusing as possible.

As well, it was also noted – and we had this conversation with the Minister – that we felt that although the term “forced growth” was indicated that it was capped at 1.5 percent, this number is maybe questionable, and that we may want to have that number revisited just to make sure that we are really dealing with a true number moving forward.

You heard from a number of Members here regarding education infrastructure and that there was a, I think Madam Bisaro used the word “paltry” amount put into education, and I agree with that word. But I can assure you that you’re going to hear, during the course of this exercise, new school infrastructure in Trout Lake, Colville and in Yellowknife as being very important issues. Not to mention the fact, as we heard from a number of Members here, Aurora campus, college. These are important priorities and we need to look at assessing and applying the necessary funds for these priority projects. We’re hoping that your team sees the need from our side of the fence here in terms of what is important, not just for the Members but for all the people of the Northwest Territories.

That being said, I want to just take a moment to talk a little bit about supporting for Avens. It was almost an implied, and Avens being a seniors complex that is requesting or has the foresight to look in the future and say we’re going to run into problems. We

all agree that everyone around this table is inching ever so closely to that age of retirement, albeit some faster than others, but it is going to be a concern. Our aging population in the Northwest Territories is no different than any other jurisdiction in Canada, and every other jurisdiction in Canada is preparing for that. I thank Avens. We have to give them kudos for coming up with a plan, but we can’t leave them high and dry. We have to work with this organization.

I want to make it quite clear that this is not a Yellowknife project. Yes, it’s built in Yellowknife. Yes, it’s located down the street from the Legislative Assembly, but I believe with the statistics that we were given, that over 60 percent of the residents at Avens are from outlying communities. This is a community centre. This is a community project, and I think it’s important that we treat it as a community project and not just as a Yellowknife project. I’m going to be seeking not only support from my colleagues on this side of the House, I’m going to be seeking support from my colleagues on the other side of the House who are actually paying attention today. It’s impressive. It’s a novelty.

I think we’ve got to put it on the radar. We’ve got to put it on the radar sooner than later. I don’t want to see it at the end of the 17th Assembly; I want to see

it during the 17th Assembly.

Adding to that is that we’ve spoken many, many times in the House – I’m one of them; I’m inclusive in this – is the fact that public safety is of vital importance; public safety on our highways, public safety with ground ambulance. I can’t tell you how many Member’s statements and oral questions that I’ve made. I lost count how many on this side of the House. And those are just the few that actually make it to the floor of this House. How many other instances don’t even make our in-box or e-mails or people who stopped us on the street or Tim Horton’s and say, I’m concerned; I’m concerned that my wife went down the highway and something happened and there was nothing for her to have, and her cell phone didn’t work where she was. The people have spoken loud and clear. They’ve said, quite clearly, fix the problem; deal with the problem.

When we’re looking at an infrastructure budget like this where a weighted average, a heavy weighted average is with new road construction. And I get it. I’ve raised my hand and I’ve voted towards projects too. I’m just as guilty. But when the weighted average of a project like this is literally peeling the vital energy of resource dollars to one single project or new project of infrastructure and it’s taking away from public safety, I think we’ve got to rebalance and redo our thinking.

Why are we rushing to build this in four years? We’re hearing the fact that it’s going to cost us more. Well, I can also tell you the fact that we don’t

even have the full budget yet, as we clearly know, so it might cost us more. We can’t guarantee this project is going to be under $300 million. We know that. We just don’t know what it is. You’re going to hear me say many times during the next couple of weeks, give me a couple kilometres of road for this, give me a couple kilometres of road for that, because a couple kilometres of road is six million bucks. That’s a lot of money. We can do some really good and a lot of endeavours, albeit outside of infrastructure, for anything. I’m just saying, we’ve got to think smarter, and I’m not sure if this budget is dealing with that type of smart thinking.

The other one I want to talk about just briefly – and it was touched on by Member Bromley – is we’ve got a couple highways in and around the Yellowknife area, and yes, we spent over $100 million on Highway No. 3. Unfortunately, that last go-around had a taillight warranty and we got what we got. Now we’ve got exactly what we got, which is a public safety nightmare. There is no way on God’s green earth you can drive that road at the posted speed limit. I double dog dare anyone in this room to do that. Good luck. It ain’t going to happen. And if you do, you have a first round ticket to Canadian Tire to get new shocks, new tires, or maybe a new front end, because that’s exactly what’s going to happen. For us not to consider doing what’s right, which is probably the most travelled road in the Northwest Territories, which is the Highway No. 3 segment between Behchoko and Yellowknife, you place that segment of road on any other road stretch in the Northwest Territories and I guarantee you it’s off the charts. We don’t like to talk about it very much, but it’s off the charts. It’s used more than any other road, but yet we’re throwing rice at a freight train, and we’re hoping that the little bit of patchwork and everything else, and we hear kilometre this and kilometre that has been done. It doesn’t cut the mustard. It’s a public safety nightmare. In fact, one of our own Members had to save a young man in the last year or so, and thank God one of our Members here with a SAT phone.

The other segment of road that I think is way overdue – and for whatever reason, whether they ran out of money or whatever – is the road to Detah. Why not finish that road? What makes them drop to the bottom of the queue over new road infrastructure? Who makes that decision? How is that decided upon? How many years are we going to leave that road unattended? These are questions that we continuously ask. I can dust off 100 Hansards and I bet you I can find that comment at least 100 times in this House. Yet, we’re talking about it again, and it’s still not on here. Yet, we’ve got a lot of new road infrastructure and a weighted average of this budget is towards that. I think we’ve really got to look at balancing.

All in all, again, I understand the complexities of doing a budget. I’ve done budgets all my life. But I also remember when I was doing budgets, you have to listen to the needs, not just the needs of the people in the ivory towers and what’s important. You have to look at the needs of the people on this side of the House, and more importantly, you have to look at the needs of the people who put us in these chairs. They’re holding us accountable, and they’re holding the accountability of the Members on that side of the House – which are called Ministers – they’re holding them accountable too. We’re not heeding to their call, and I think that we’ve got an opportunity here, and I’m hoping through the next couple of weeks that we’re going to be able to address this budget in its true format, talk about the high level items, and hopefully find some common ground and, hopefully, maybe make some changes if we can. But moreover, maybe set the stage for this next go-around so we can see it done a little bit better, a little bit more attuned to what the needs are, and let’s listen to this side of the House.

I don’t want to be just spewing hot air. I’ve got better things to do tonight. Thank you very much.