Thank you, Madam Chair. I do have some opening comments here. I’m going to limit my comments more around one part of the budget and allow my opportunity to be more detailed as we get more in depth by department.

The concern I have is that we’ve seen our social umbrella expand to greater deficits, and when you look at past budgets and even this budget, there is no economic balance that we see for the Territories moving forward.

In 2011-2012 we spent roughly $360 million in health and that constituted about 26.4 percent of our overall budget then. As we progressed over the years, we are currently, according to the main estimates here, at $363 million and change, at 24.8 percent of our overall budget. So we’ve taken, basically, an erosion as a total means of our expenditure in Health, which really, when you look at it, has to beg some questions. Again, our social umbrella requires continued investment, we have got forced growth, we’ve got a whole flurry of initiatives that have been identified by this side of the House and in Social Programs committee, and again, the concern we have is where are we going.

To top that off, if you look at out of the $363 million that we have in Health, about $100 million or so of that is medical travel. So when you really analyze how much money we’re spending on health, true health – and I’m not talking about transportation from facility to facility – we’re only spending about 17.9 percent of our budget in what I consider true health.

When you look at the economics of scale, when you look at what’s happening across Canada, most provincial jurisdictions, according to the last reports, are spending well in excess of 42 percent, or .42 dollars of their budget dollars on health. Most experts and economists believe that with the continued pressures on health and, as you mentioned in your statement earlier today, people are living longer and putting more pressures on the system. The anticipation is that budgets across Canada, provincial budgets, will have to exceed over .50 dollars, or 50 percent, of their budget on health.

So it’s clear in this day and age that although the Minister has come forward and has provided a tight budget, or a budget of restraint, health, and a question in my mind, is one of those areas that we cannot restrain. We’ve got to keep up with demand; we’ve got to keep up with forced growth; and we’ve got to keep up with that social umbrella that our people in the Northwest Territories are dependent on.

I think we’ll probably find out more in the details segment when we get to the Department of Health,

the fact that we’ve got to look at some key areas to keep up with those expenditures, and those areas will be definitely in prevention and promotion, and we believe that the chronic disease management is definitely suffering, and a proper management model was not mentioned, per se, in this budget.

I think the people will look to this government to create some framework around specialized wellness, of course, and mental health and addictions. What we’ve got before us and what has been presented is more of a piecemeal approach, and we were hoping that the 2013-2014 budget would have had more adequacies to achieve what I considered our Assembly’s goals and mission. I think the NWT residents expect us to deliver on these most important priorities in the specialized wellness.

I think, more importantly, in concluding my area in Health and Social Services, there has been some degree of investment in this budget with respect to midwifery. You know the studies have been done. There has been some very serious and solid recommendations made, and I think the time has now come for our children to be born in their homes and in their communities. I believe that the amount of money that has been put aside is really a good gesture, but really by no sense or any means an era that we’re going to see midwifery in this term, or at least in this fiscal budget term, which is unfortunate.

Madam Chair, I know I’ll have a lot more details as we proceed. I just wanted to open up my comments on a bit of my disappointment on the fact that I believe we’re losing ground in health care, and I’m hoping that we’re able to look at some opportunities in the near future through any type of supplementation by this government and this Minister to put more emphasis on those areas I mentioned before. So thank you, Madam Chair. Those are my opening comments.

Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. Mr. Miltenberger.

Thank you, Madam Chair. The Member raises a concern that we should be putting more money into social programs, specifically health and social services. When I was Health Minister for five and a half years, I made the comment repeatedly that if you doubled the budget of health care, we’d be back within a year or a year and a half saying we need more to do all things for all people. I don’t think, looking to the fact that other jurisdictions are spending 40 to 45 percent of every dollar on health care, not social services, not housing, not anything else, is a sign of success. The reality is, every jurisdiction will tell you that they’re on the fast track to bankruptcy. The sign of spending that kind of money, untrammelled, uncontrolled health care costs, is not affordable. That’s a practical reality.

I think we should take considerable comfort in the fact that we have a combined system, not just health care as a stovepipe, but when you link all the social programs we provide, we provide a selection of services that I have always said are, in my opinion, without equal in any other jurisdiction. You talk about the $180-some million we put in subsidy programs, our medical travel, our support for seniors, our no rent or modest rent for seniors over 60, we have an array. If this Legislature decides that they want to, in fact, spend 40 cents of every dollar on health care, and at the same time agree that we’re not going to raise taxes, and at the same time agree that we want to do all these other things, then we best gather around the table and sort that particular direction out, because we’ve been managing ourselves very, very carefully to stay fiscally balanced to make sure we have all those services there and at the same time do the investments in infrastructure and do all the other things that are critical to our territory.

I would suggest that when you look at the whole package that we put forward as a Legislature as a budget, that a lot of the issues that are not directly health related are tied to health care. The quality of life in the communities, the housing, the water, the roads, the ability to get a job, all those things are tied, in the long run, to health care.

I appreciate the Member’s concern, but I would strongly speak against looking to those poor jurisdictions that are paying that kind of money on every dollar to try to deliver health care costs, when they will stand up and all say that if we keep on this path we will be bankrupt.

I appreciate the Minister’s reply and his concern about deficit spending and potential bankruptcy in other jurisdictions. I would, though, like to make mention that budgets invoke change in policy. Budgets provide ladders of opportunity. I believe that we have a huge amount of opportunity that is still not being tapped into in the Territories. We have crumbling infrastructure. We’ve got maximum capacity. In fact, we’ve got overcapacity subscribed. If we pick our Stanton Territorial Hospital, for example, this hospital was designed for 10,000 visits per year. We know this hospital is now at 20,000 visits per year. They are working out of closets. In fact, they don’t even have room for closets anymore because they’ve been used for all different sorts of service oriented work.

I’m concerned. We’ve got no nurses in the communities. We’ve heard that time and time again here in this House. We’ve got concerns with long-term care facilities, long-term care beds as our aging population is bestowed upon us. We’ve got issues with home care. Again, keeping people in our homes as long as we can, especially in our small communities. I’m really concerned that as much as we want to look at fiscally tightening and

battening down the hatches and controlling the economic levers for our success, our spending on health care has not kept up with the times and has not kept up with the demands of the Northwest Territories. The residents demand more. I think the residents need to hear a future in health care spending. I’m not saying 42 cents of every dollar needs to be the magic number but, believe me, the current flow of 24.8 cents of our dollar being spent in this budget does not equate or fit the means of what we’re seeing provincially, and I think there’s a huge opportunity going forward.

We agree that we have infrastructure challenges, which is why we have taken the planning steps that we have in terms of two years of fiscal discipline so we can, in fact, put more money into infrastructure. We have a $3 billion infrastructure deficit. We’ve identified and we’re starting to put some very serious money into Stanton and we’ve acknowledged that it needs a midlife retrofit. It was built at a time when the population was a lot lower. That’s going to be a $200 million to $300 million project and we’re on the road to taking care of that. We’re building long-term care facilities. In this budget, we’ve put in millions to better staff some of the existing facilities in Smith, Simpson, I believe, and Yellowknife. We recognize that as well.

Once again, I don’t think we should use the amount of money we spend as the clear comparator. That we’re going to compare ourselves, okay, it’s not 42 but it should be 30.

I say again that I think we have a level of services in this territory that are without equal in this country. We have to compare what you are getting for the money we spend. When you combine all the things we put money into to assist people, I think that’s the test we have to look at. It’s too simplistic to say Ontario spends this much on health care, we have to spend something like that or, for some reason, we’re not doing enough even though we have the best seniors benefits in the country, we have some of the best student financial assistance in the country, the best pharmacare, the best medical travel, we have midwifery as an insured service that is going to grow now to other parts of the territory. Most other jurisdictions don’t even have that as a service. I think we have to be very careful how we move on this. We can do this if that’s the will of this Legislature, but we have to be prepared to make those trade-offs as we do that.

We do have nurses. One of the challenges is to get all the grads to want to work someplace other than Yellowknife, and come up with a training program that allows new grads to be given another component to allow them to be able to go into a community as a nurse in charge.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Next on the list for general comments I have Mr. Bromley.

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.

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Minister Miltenberger.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I appreciate the Member’s comments and his ongoing attention to content and detail.

With regard to being more in debt, I would just point out once again, if you put us on a national

comparative scale, we are one of the best managed and best run jurisdictions in the country with our debt to GDP ratio and the amount of interest to revenue that we are paying to service our debt. Most of our debt is self-liquidating.

We actually have about $150-some million or $180 million of actual debt that’s not, at this point, self-liquidating. We made a conscious point during extremely challenging economic times to invest money, to do some very strategic borrowing to, in fact, protect programs and services, not lay people off and still put money into infrastructure, and we’ve done all that. So we’re not just going out of control here. We have very carefully managed debt. I would suggest, as well, that big project that the Member says has no value, I think that the bridge is a legacy piece of infrastructure that is already showing its value. I think the $200 million to $300 million we spend on a big project like Stanton is going to be critical money that should be, and needs to be, spent and will be spent.

It is easy for us to say, in this part of the country where there are roads and bridges and paving everywhere, that a road that opens up a part of the Far North, a critical part of our territory, has no value and it’s not critical and it’s not important. I would suggest to you that if we look at the big picture, that is a big project. It is part of the Northern Strategy of the federal government. It feeds into the value of the North, and roads, in my opinion, as Prime Minister Diefenbaker pointed out, are always good investments. And we’re not closing services down. In fact, we’re expanding services as you look around us with early childhood, midwifery, all those program areas, we are continuing to expand services. If there is a strong exception to the fact that we say it would be fool hardy to put highly volatile resource dollars into running base programs and services, then we should have that political debate and we should look at other jurisdictions. Let’s look at Norway and all that resource money. Not only did they not put it into programs and services, they took it completely offshore. In fact, they haven’t allowed any of that resource money into that economy and they’ve developed a very strong, vibrant, sustainable economy.

If you look at the trouble that Alberta’s having this very day and age, as we sit here talking, with their shortfalls because they put all that money into programs and services, they’ve used it to run their day-to-day operations. When the price fluctuates down, they are $6 billion short. They are paying a premium. They are losing on every barrel of oil, but unlike Norway, which has a $600 billion plus Heritage Fund, Alberta is $18 million after all the years of the oil boom that they've had and the money they’ve had. So if you want to have that discussion, we should have that about what’s the best way to do this. Should we grow the base?

Should we aim to 40 cents on every dollar because that’s what other jurisdictions that are carrying enormous deficits have put money into those program areas and somehow that would make us a better run jurisdiction? We should have that discussion.

We’ve picked, as an Assembly, a track that is worth staying on and I think we have to work hard to stay on that track. We are $50 million more next year into the capital. Devolution is coming and some of those resource royalties will be flowing to us. The red flag projects will be back on the list. We are going to expand midwifery. We are going to do a lot of other things.

For the record, Madam Chair, I will point out, as well, last year the Legislature agreed to put $250,000 to the Heritage Fund. That was to the base. So there is another $250,000 into the Heritage Fund again this year, and it will stay in the base until that figure gets changed through the budget process. We are stretching the money we have in the Sahtu as far as we can. There is also money that’s going to come to us through this Environmental Research Fund that’s going to allow us to supplement that money as we work on groundwater, surface water and wildlife work.

Madam Chair, I appreciate the Member’s comments. I think overall we have a good budget, and we look forward to the discussion with the Member and others as we go forward. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. I am going to use the Chair’s prerogative to allow Mr. Bromley a very, very short, I don’t know what it is, rebuttal/comment. Mr. Bromley.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Just a very brief comment. If the Minister proposes to put non-renewable resource revenue into the Heritage Fund, I would support that. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. I will take that as a comment. Next on my list is Mr. Blake.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Just reflecting on what I said last year, I was very concerned that they weren’t putting money into our economy. That’s something I am very concerned with. Although we are doing well here in the southern part of our territory, up in the northern part, the Mackenzie Delta, we are struggling. There isn’t very much for economic projects up there right now. I am very glad we are putting some funds forward to meet our priorities; for example, the fibre optic link. As I mentioned last time, we did put money towards the Inuvik-Tuk highway and I’m glad to see that in the budget this year.

Also, investments in mental health and addiction prevention, on-the-land programs, as you all know the Gwich’in have a facility up in the Mackenzie

Delta that we need to make use of. We had a lot of programs that were held last year and a lot of people in the region would like to see that progress further.

It’s very good to see that things have picked up in the Sahtu region. Our employment rates right now are roughly at 68 percent, but we could make it better once we begin our economic projects in the territory.

A good example my colleagues brought up here last week were the prices in Yellowknife. They are very concerned that they are paying $1.38 per litre of gas, but yet in the Mackenzie Delta, where there is not very much for economics, we are paying $1.80. Yet there seems to be no problem with that.

Madam Chair, I really appreciate that we’re putting $250,000 to focus on youth. There are a lot of projects that are being taken in the communities right now. A lot of these communities, like the smaller communities, don’t have youth facilities or youth centres that youth can gather, just communicate and keep busy. That way they’re not led astray.

Also, I appreciate that we are investing in long-term facilities here in the southern part of the region. Even though the territory, a good example about a month back is here in town. There was somebody in the mall there that was speaking about health care in the territory. They are really impressed the way we take care of our elders here in the territory. That is our tradition. We need to expand what we are doing right now. Right now we are basically focusing on regional centres, but we talk about decentralization. Well, let’s look at the larger centres, larger communities, not only the regional centres. I think that’s something this government could do in the future.

I also appreciate that we are putting funds towards the fibre optic link. I am really excited to see these projects progress further.

And also tourism. We did get an increase in tourism. We can always do a lot more. We have a lot of opportunity here in the Northwest Territories for tourism. Although we are putting a lot into marketing, we need to work with the small businesses to create a lot more businesses, especially in tourism, whether it’s boat tours. It doesn’t have to be big game hunting, although big game hunting is doing well. There are all different types that we can do.

Also, with the Deh Cho Bridge, I hope there are a lot more tourism initiatives with that as a highlight.

With that, that’s all I have right now, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Blake. Minister Miltenberger.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I appreciate the Member’s

comments. As we get into the detail with those program areas that I know the Member has referenced on-the-land programs and some of the other work that has to be done, we will be able to have those discussions when the Ministers come to the table.

I appreciate his support for the Mackenzie Valley fibre optic line as well as, of course, the work that we are trying to do on the Inuvik-Tuk highway. Part of our commitment to try to spread the wealth around the Northwest Territories as much as possible, and these are, I think, in the long run, very positive projects. I thank the Member for his comments. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Next I have Mr. Moses.

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.

Thank you very much, Mr. Moses. Minister Miltenberger.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I thank the Member for his comments. This budget-making is an issue and it’s a process of making choices, of looking at a long list of demands with a finite amount of resources, and we’ve done that again this year. We’ve been on this budget now for about six months collectively, and we’ve tried to capture as much as we can with the funds that are available, and we’re here to have the discussion now about the pieces, the final pieces maybe that need work or that possibly need adjusting.

I appreciate the Member’s comments about the support for the projects. The liquid natural gas in Inuvik, there is work being done and we are hoping to be able to show some success here in the next number of weeks if all pans out, which we’d be coming to the committee with as we do the work, and work that has potential not only for Inuvik, once we get it up and running, but if in fact it proves out it will be a benefit to other thermal communities as well. So we’re hard at work on that one.

We will look forward to the discussion once again on things like the midwifery and all the other program areas where there are concerns being raised, keeping in mind the agreements we have to manage our fiscal realities, so that next year we’ll start with an additional $50 million into capital. When we are successful with devolution, we’ll also be reworking as we meet with the Members to discuss the impact that will have on our operations as well. But in the meantime, this budget is based on the money we have on the table and I look

forward to the discussion with Members as we carry on here over the next five weeks. Thank you.

Thank you. Next I have for general comments, Mr. Bouchard.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I think most of the information or concerns that I have will come out in the details of each department, but I think my biggest concerns today that I’d like to express is the continuing increasing size of our budget. Our expenditures continue to get larger and larger, even though the Minister and the Cabinet keep indicating to us that we’re on fiscal restraint and we want to keep our expenditures down as much as possible, but we continue to grow the size of our budget every year. Phenomenal numbers for the population of 43,000 people.

I think one of the biggest concerns that I see in the budget is the creation of an additional 56 new positions in the GNWT. We’re hitting over 5,000 employees. Those are phenomenal numbers, I think. They’re huge numbers. We’re obviously the main employer in the Northwest Territories. That doesn’t include numbers of NGOs and associations that the government funds. So how much of our economy is basically driven on the back of the GNWT. Our budget is astronomic.

Along the lines of those employment numbers, one of the priorities in this Assembly is to do decentralization. Granted, I’m appreciative of the fact that my community is seeing some of that decentralization, but when you look at the numbers, a creation of 56 new jobs continues to be anywhere from 25 to 26 positions of those are created in Yellowknife. So I mean, we’re still keeping 50 percent to the capital and 50 percent to the other regions spread out throughout the Territories. The department and the budget indicated 18 decentralization positions. Well, that’s not a very big number. When you say in one budget they’re creating 56 new jobs, that’s a very small number. So how much are we committed to decentralization as a government? I have a big concern with that.

Like I said, if we’re creating 56 and we’ve only decentralized 18 of them, it’s a very small number. It’s an astronomically small number. So are we really committed to decentralization or are we just doing it lip service to the Members that are out in the regions in trying to fulfill this priority of our Assembly?

I think people talk about the fact that we have a surplus, but we know that surplus is being expensed on financing of infrastructure projects. So I think we’re not in a bad position but, I mean, I am concerned with the growth of our budget in the last 10 years. I’ve said it in this House before that our budgets have grown astronomically, our PY positions have grown astronomically since division. Everything’s doubled, if not more. We need

somehow to put a rein on some of these expenditures.

I know there’s a group in our public that want to see us do more, but there’s also a group that are doing business out there and saying how can we continue to afford this. We’re doing it with no increased taxes. Eventually that wall is going to come down where we basically have to flood people with a bunch of additional taxes to pay for some of these costs. I know devolution is coming, and I know the federal government is going to be kicking… We’re going to get more money from them on our resource sharing, but a lot of that is dependent on diamonds. If our diamonds go away, what does that do to our economy?

I think we need a better hold on growth of the size of the budget, growth the size of the public sector. We need to do more creating jobs in other ways. I am happy to see that we’re putting money into tourism. I agree that it’s not the amount that we wanted to see originally, but I think we’re going to get there. Maybe the phased-in approach is probably the most effective way to do that.

I guess those are my initial concerns with the budget, the fact that it’s just continuing to grow. It’s a growing monster, and we need to rein it in somehow.

Thank you, Mr. Bouchard. Mr. Miltenberger.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I think there is a shared concern about the growth of government. We’ve squeezed government back from the days of annual 6 percent plus growth down to 2, down to next year we’re going to be aiming to 1.5 percent.

As you’ve heard around the table already, there is a concern and demand that we spend more money on program areas at the same time as we try to manage our money. We agree that the size of the public service is very large. As we try to control our growth going forward, one of the things that we are looking at is controlling position growth, unless it’s tied to a legal or mandatory responsibility. Any other requests would have to be reallocation of internal resources.

I mentioned that next year we’re looking at being able to take advantage of some of the fruits of our labour of the last two years. That $50 million that I talked about is in addition to the Tuk-Inuvik highway, Stanton, and the Mackenzie Valley fibre optic line. We will be able to address other issues such as the red flag list.

We are committed to decentralization. At this point we’ve talked about it, and we’re planning it with devolution. We’ve done an initial phase 1 of taking existing low-hanging fruit, as it’s been described, for decentralization. But on a go-forward basis, we’re going to have to prove to this House what it means

with the other jobs coming to us, especially the jobs coming from Ottawa. The commitment is there.

The surplus that we referred to is an operational surplus. We’re about $580 million in debt or thereabouts. Operational surpluses are savings during the year, one time, which we put towards infrastructure. I just want to make sure the folks listening don’t think that we’ve got a separate bank account where we saved all this money, because we have the ongoing debt which we have to manage.

I agree with the Member, and this Legislature has agreed, with the fiscal plan that we’ve laid out. We have to control our expenditures. We don’t want to count on taxation. It’s counterproductive at this point. It’s not so much a revenue issue at this point as it’s still an expenditure one. There are still additional revenues coming here which are not reflected in this budget because we haven’t inked the deal. When we get devolution, we’ll be coming back with a reworked fiscal framework.

I guess it’s those decentralization positions that I have some concern about. Devolution is a discussion of, there’s also opportunity for that area as well. One of the biggest concerns that I have with that is the Minister has indicated that they’re committed to decentralization and getting those devolution positions eventually out to the regions, but I haven’t seen a lot of activity or a lot of planning discussion on them making sure that communities are prepared for it.

I know in Yellowknife they’re building a new office building here that there’s probably going to be some available space. But in the communities, there’s very little planning being seen from my side of them preparing for any commitment to put jobs out into the regions. Some of my colleagues can correct me here, but I don’t see them out in the smaller communities and saying let’s see what office space is available so we can put jobs into Aklavik or Providence. Is there a commitment by this government? That’s my concern as well as the decentralization positions.

Like I said, 18 is a small number when we create 56 in one year. I’ve got statistics that we’ve created 80 in the last two years. Some of the numbers are indicating that probably 75 percent of those are created in Yellowknife or the North Slave area. What kind of decentralization commitment are we doing over the last couple of years? Those numbers are astronomical. The amount of creation we’re creating, we’re increasing the operating costs of this government plus we’re putting it all into one centre. I mean, we’ve seen some of the difficulties that happened in Yukon where Whitehorse is the centre of Yukon and there’s not too much activity anywhere else. It’s astronomical some of the numbers that are coming out.