Our Minister of Finance has been travelling through the Northwest Territories and he’s indicated to the public that with that resource revenue sharing money we’re going to put some money into the Heritage Fund, we’re going to pay down debt. But, really, we’re not paying down

debt. We’re looking at taking on another billion dollars’ worth of debt.

The general public supported the concept of putting money away, and I think the way we put money away is through our Heritage Fund, and we should be putting money away at 25 percent per year, not 5 percent.

Thank you, Mr. Bouchard. The Member for Frame Lake, Ms. Bisaro.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to commend the government on this – yet another – budget address here today for the fiscal year 2014-2015.

We have many challenges in the Northwest Territories and we also have many opportunities, so it becomes the task of this government and our Finance Minister to balance all of those interests and try to do the best we can to manage our territory.

I think of a few things that are mentioned in here today. I think the initiative to try to increase the population of the Northwest Territories with a set target and a set goal within a certain time frame is a very good idea. We can talk about infrastructure deficit and all the things that we need to build, but let me tell you that if we do not have children in our schools, if we do not have people living in our communities, there is going to be little need for more infrastructure. So, it becomes a catch-22 sometimes. Does more infrastructure attract more people, or what comes first, the people or the infrastructure?

We have a difficult and challenging course ahead of us. As I said yesterday, there’s a hole in the bucket; it’s the people that are leaving the Northwest Territories. Like I said, I will have numerous statements throughout this sitting of the Legislature on how – I want to phrase it, I want to coin it in this way – not what is the government doing wrong, how can we do it better.

Of course, we do employ our students and our local people. You talk to some people in industry, they will tell you that every able-bodied, sober, sound-minded person in the Northwest Territories is working at this time. I disagree with that. I think there is lots of room in our public service for people who want to advance, who want to enhance their training and who want to get into private sector employment and who want to get into public sector

employment. There are lots of people out there and I think that we can do better as a government. That’s going to be my motto as we look at all of these things over the next six weeks. What can we as a government do better? What do we have the resources to do and how can we affect change in areas where we can improve circumstances?

Speaking overall and generally, again I would just like to commend the government for this balanced approach to our fiscal forecast for the upcoming year and I look forward to working with them on the initiatives laid out. Thank you.

Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. Member for Inuvik Boot Lake, Mr. Moses.

Mr. Speaker, it is once again budget day in the NWT, or I’ve started to see it as it’s Cabinet day once again, a day once a year where all of Cabinet’s dreams are realized and Members’ requests are simply daunted off for yet another year.

When the Finance Minister continues to school us about discipline choices and that we must be thinking about a fiscally sustainable path, that’s become consensus talking for saying we have no money for Members’ initiatives, but don’t worry, your day will one day come.

When the government talks about fiscal restraint, I go to my dictionary and it reads they’re telling me your initiatives are about to be cut.

This budget falls short to respond to Members’ concerns and what the public wants. Members have been asked to review a budget. We looked at a 99 percent completed budget. Our advice of less than 1 percent was ignored.

The government will decry, “we are broke,” they say. But you know what? The bottom line doesn’t fall out, because we heard earlier today there was a large surplus. But rather, scaling back on their initiatives, what do they do? They cut ours.

This doesn’t reflect the trueness of consensus government in any manner. One might assume they would give us a little give and take, the things we desire on behalf of our constituents, rather than watching them be trimmed to fall to the floor.

Today represents yet another fine example of this McLeod government schooling us and saying we know best, and they continue to act like a healthy majority government. So this government will stop at saying everything and will stop at no stop by saying we are a collaborative government. But I

look and ask anyone to say, where are Members’ recommendations in this budget?

Over the coming days the government will hear continually about the shortfalls of programs that we need to invest better in, and of course, we’ll hear the response from government: No, no, no. The failure of this budget isn’t just on the Finance Minister, but I say it’s on all seven Cabinet Ministers not fulfilling their obligations of working with Members on this side of the House.

With an operating surplus of $232 million, there must have been the smallest amount of room for MLA concerns. We want more for cost of living. We want more in the Heritage Fund. The public would be shocked by how little is represented.

So, in closing, the Chinese will say this year is the year of the House, or horse. I’ll say it again one more time.

Sorry, Mr. Speaker, I seek unanimous consent to conclude my statement.

---Unanimous consent granted

The Chinese will tell you this is the year of the horse. Well, I tell you once again, this is the year of Cabinet, again. I will encourage all my regular colleagues to vote against this budget until we see solid initiatives represented, pushed forward, moved forward by our MLAs, by the public’s wishes.

In closing, the Finance Minister says he wants to do things differently, so I encourage him to start listening to Members. That would be different.

Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. The Member for Sahtu, Mr. Yakeleya.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As I’ve listened to the Finance Minister and went through the budget address and looked at some of the highlights, I was quite pleased with some of the initiatives happening in the Northwest Territories, certainly the long-held dream of Cece McCauley in Norman Wells on the Mackenzie Valley Highway and the work towards that, and the government is responding to the oil and gas activity in the Sahtu and other areas around the Northwest Territories that the government is responding with the fiscal restraint that we’re operating under. Of course, the new day for us will be devolution on April 1st in a

couple of months from now.

I’m very surprised and, like Mrs. Groenewegen talked about, there was some creativity with this budget here. I was shockingly surprised to see that there were hundreds of vacant positions within the government. Every year we come to this part of our Assembly and we approve positions, and the government has said there were hundreds of

vacant positions. We approve it, but the money… I don’t know where the money goes. I’m not sure what the exact number is and how many positions are vacant and how much money that relates to, but we should have some discussion because some of our requests don’t quite make the table through the budget address, as one of my colleagues mentioned.

I want to raise that as an alarming concern of the positions that we, as a government, have not yet quite figured out on the efficiency and the effectiveness of government when we have hundreds of vacant positions within our government. That money is approved, it’s there within the departments, but we don’t see the end result of it. What happens to it? We’re asking for positions in our small communities and we’re always asking for these positions, can we get this position, and they keep saying no, there’s no money or it doesn’t quite meet the standards.

So I wanted to say to the government that we’re paying attention over here and we’ll be asking some hard questions the next couple of weeks.

Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. The Member for Mackenzie Delta, Mr. Blake.