Mr. Chairman, I certainly support this. I’ve been raising this particular matter for a lot of years, and I’m kind of glad to see it finally get a
bit of traction on this side of the House. For many years I had heard at the time Finance Minister Roland say, oh no, don’t worry. That’s why we’ll have a Heritage Fund, and don’t worry; we’ll use the Heritage Fund to take care of any ups and downs. Then along came, following him, Finance Minister Miltenberger, the eldered Miltenberger, that is, and in his wise way he, too, said much the same way, don’t worry, there will be a Heritage Fund one day, and you know, you guys are talking about the Heritage Fund.
I always tried to remind everyone that this is not what the Heritage Fund was intended for, and I’ve always been shooting for a five-year average suggesting that we could predict through our finance folks somewhere in a modest five-year number and we use that one, and again, money achieved over above that five-year average rolls into this little savings account and it’s there, accessible, because, as highlighted by other Members, and certainly not just by me but certainly over many years, when something goes awry, we just have no way to respond, and it seems as if it’s murder when we call out and say we have to do something. People shriek as if, like, please don’t touch our departments and don’t cut here, don’t cut there. In a lot of ways I also say it’s kind of difficult, too, because it’s a really stressful time to look at program departments to say, well, we have to find, what is it, $10 million, $20 million, $30 million, $40 million. Who knows? It does become a difficult challenge.
To be looking at this literally just weeks before the new budget is supposed to roll in and we have to point out a particular department or section and say we’re going to have to make some changes and guess what, you’re it, is not a good way to do budgeting.
This would certainly help stabilize it. As a matter of fact, to provide some interesting examples here, I’m going to go back a couple years. Again, I know the wise and eldered Finance Minister would remember these days, but there was a time when we had received almost $300 million of overpayment, and I came in the following year, and the first thing they said was, well, you’re broke, and don’t worry, we’re going to have to figure out how to pay it, and the good thing about… The only good news about how broke we were was the fact that in the 2003-2004 budget was, well, the federal government was going to give us a couple years to come up with the $300 million, but we still owed it, and everybody knew it was an overpayment back from the Stephen Kawfwi government. But boy oh boy, I think as Mr. Dolynny just pointed out, they saw the money and they thought, my goodness, it was almost like arenas for everybody. They just turned around and said let’s spend money, community halls, whatever you want. Don’t worry. It’s the next government’s problem, and that’s what it was.
In other subsequent years, I’ve done some research on this one and, quite frankly, some years we do receive overpayments and yet how do we respond? Well, in 2004 we had a $42 million overpayment. In 2005, we had a $33 million overpayment. In 2006, we had a $26 million payment. Fortunately, we started gaining ground again by underestimating our corporate revenues at almost $40 million. I’ve got a chart here that spans 14 years, 15 counting this budget year, and I mean, my goodness, it looks like we’re 50 percent. I mean, maybe if you’re a baseball player a 50 percent average is good, but when you’re in the finance business, 50 percent is pretty poor.
I’m not blaming anyone. It’s just the fact is it’s too hard to plan. You can’t predict somebody who refiles. It’s wrong to put the finger on any one person. This is just wise planning.
Of course, I could go on into further details, but time is ticking away on my time to be able to speak, but the point is, this is really built around small, sound budgeting. You don’t need big, fancy calculations, whatever sort of rings towards your attention, but what I would say is that this is just bread and butter, kitchen table economics. Save money because not every day is going to be a great day. So I support the motion and I certainly look forward to Cabinet supporting it as well. Thank you.