Thank you, Mr. Chair. I was involved with earlier discussion on the program review office concept. Some of the Members in Cabinet were also in this discussion. We thought it was a good thing because we were going to look the whole operation of the government and see where some of the programs make sense in our operations. Coming from a small community and jurisdiction, I thought this was good. A lot of the programs that are operating in the communities, the left hand needs to know what the right hand is doing and have efficiencies in our communities.
One of the programs I thought was going to be looked at on the lower list of programs to look at was ENR and ITI. ENR has trapping programs for trappers and harvesters, but ITI controls the money. That’s been told to me over the 10 years I’ve been an MLA, it makes it difficult for the trappers at times. They go to ENR and work with the furs and traps, but you have to go to ITI for the money. I thought that would be a good fit to put it together. So the trappers in their limited use of the English language to understand how the program works should go to one office. They are being bounced
from ITI to ENR. It would make it easier for the trappers and harvesters to be together. I thought something like that would be accomplished in our small communities. It makes sense.
Mr. Blake has noted some of the things that came out of the program review office that are helping. So this motion strongly recommends the government undertake a comprehensive review of the form and function and the operations. Is it still doing what it’s supposed to do in the spirit and intent of our putting this forward in the 16th Assembly? Do we have a
larger say into this? Are we meeting regularly? Are we looking at some of the issues? I believe we have done some of that work. What are the issues we are looking at?
I was quite taken aback when we had the $40 million building that Mrs. Groenewegen talked about. I didn’t know it was something that this government was looking at the whole operation here in Yellowknife. They spend millions and millions in Yellowknife. We need offices and infrastructure in our small communities.
So I guess I got a little bit turned off by seeing some of the things that just happened. I believe that we need to come back to the table, take the opportunity to roll up our sleeves and say, is this what it was intended to be? From a broader perspective, are the needs of the communities being met for the efficiency of programs and services in our communities? When this was first brought up, I was also inclined to say let’s delete this and this. People in government can do some of this work. So we’ve got somewhat softened. I’m still going to support the motion. This is another opportunity for Cabinet to look at this and come back to us. I look forward to that. I think we can do some good things. We just have to meet each other halfway.
In this sense, I don’t know if it makes sense that we’re a co-pilot in this office. If we’re not, we will have to have some more discussion. I know the government has sent us some information in the past through the meetings we’ve had. I don’t know if we’ve been heard strongly enough. I know some things were presented to us, but anyway, I take this motion as an opportunity to come back and look at this, let’s set some timelines and schedules to see what we can do. It’s not all bad. We just need to come back again. I will be supporting the motion.