Thank you, Mr. Chair. I’d again like to welcome the Minister and the department here today for these general comments on the supplementary appropriation in the area of operations.
I wish to take the opportunity today to talk about two of the line items that we’re going to be discussing here today, the first of which is the fire suppression amount of $47 million. But before I do, I think it’s important that at every opportunity we have the pleasure of again thanking our own fire suppression teams across the Northwest Territories, both ground crew and air, and again to all the visiting jurisdictions that provided the safe haven and blanket of safety during what was one of our worst fire seasons of all time.
We know that the Minister has talked about this in the House, and Members have also brought comment, so I don’t want to belittle or continue down that path, and at a point in time, I might be discussing about this as well. I have to admit that at the beginning of the fire season, Members of the House, and I think the general public at large, received very intermittent communication. Of course, as the fire became more prominent, information became a lot more readily available, so for that I pass my thanks to the department.
However, what was missing, a key component, especially given the volume and the amount of money that was being poured into this endeavour, there was, and has been, no real mechanism put in place since I’ve been here as a Member of the 17th Legislative Assembly. The only mechanism in terms of finding out what the financial impact was as we
progressed in this 2014 fire season, was comments made by media or CBC in which that was basically the only mechanism that we had as Members as to how much money this was costing.
I know the Finance Minister was heard saying it was costing us $1 million a day. Again, this is the type of information that we only received through media sources.
So I will challenge the department to take this information as notice in terms of what can we do to improve the communication not so much of where the fires are or geographical location of the fire updates but, more importantly, some form of communication mechanism for not only the Members but maybe to the public in terms of what’s it costing us in real time of fighting these fires, so that when we see these large numbers come before committee that we do have some mitigating circumstances to put reference to. So I’ll leave that one at that, Mr. Chair.
The second one is the second large amount of the appropriations that has come before committee here, is the $20 million of the Northwest Territories Power Corporation to mitigate the low water levy at the Snare. I want to make it quite clear, and I’ve heard this already in some media sources and, of course, in social media, that this was typically a rider and an offset to deal with just Yellowknife ratepayers. I want to make it quite clear that this was not just a Yellowknife ratepayer scenario or solution; this was a solution that affected all ratepayers in the Northwest Territories.
But, Mr. Chair, what I really want to focus on here is a bit of the background to put into context the decision-making process and how this money came about and where we are today in this appropriation.
I could tell you from a chronological point of view, this information was very sparse, at best, with committee, to understand the rationale regarding the decision-making of this appropriation. Very little information was provided to committee. In fact, I’ll attest that almost none or very sparse information was given.
I can tell committee and I can tell the people listening in that it was almost to the same tune of September 26th when both the Minister of Finance
and our Premier held a joint news conference, which required, normally, a notice to the Members of the Assembly here of at least a two-hour window of notice. I can assure the committee that I don’t believe that occurred. In fact, we heard for the first time, like members of the public, that there was going to be a decision. That decision, and I’ll quote right from the media, the Premier said, “We have eliminated the need of a rate rider and have ensured the costs have not been passed on to the NWT residents.”
Mr. Chair, I can tell you that there was no heads-up for that decision, there was no notice, there was no memo, no letter, no paper trail, no Caucus discussion. This was just a political maneuver, and I can tell you, Mr. Chair, that I believe this was very cleverly orchestrated to purposely circumvent the convention or the guiding principles of consensus government. It’s so important I need to state what are some of those principals or key terminology and I think, for the record, I will bring them here to the floor of the House.
I’m going to use some of the terminology written within this consensus style of guidelines and principles that we adhere to. Terminology such as, “to work together, of open dialogue, inclusive decision-making, accommodation, respect and trust, open and respectful communication between all Members, the opportunity for all Members to have meaningful input into important decisions is fundamental,” and I think the most important guiding principle, number five, is: “Except under extraordinary circumstances, Members of the Legislative Assembly should be made aware of and have opportunity to discuss significant announcements, changes, consultations or initiatives before they are released to the public or introduced in the Legislative Assembly. Use of the element of surprise is inconsistent with consensus government.”
We know that this appropriation that we have before us did not qualify under the terms of a special warrant, so we do ask, by what tool, what FAM policy, what financial administration act, law or regulation was used to make this decision. I can tell you, Mr. Chair, there was nothing. There was nothing to support this action, and there was nothing from preventing this Cabinet from doing this or repeating this same action. I can tell you, Mr. Chair, that the precedent that is being set today by this Cabinet is not being discussed before the House.
To complicate things, it appears that the appropriation is truly only roughly about $15 million for this year and that we are actually making an appropriation amount, from what we can see here, of $5 million from next year’s budget, which for me is problematic. Why are we talking about a $20 million appropriation in this fiscal year and already taking from a future budget year? This clearly could be added to next year’s budget operations procedure, and it clearly circumvents the process by doing it in this year, and it’s very unclear and I’ll seek some rationale as to why.
So, Mr. Chair, I know that it’s almost impossible to speak against this in its principle because I believe it is still the right thing to do, but it was cleverly done to mitigate the process of convention style of consensus government. Clearly, as I see it and I think many see it, this was to prop up the stock
value of this Cabinet and this government, and I think the public sees that as well.
The Premier prides himself on being a great communicator, and I think he is a great communicator. He is a person who likes to collaborate with all community governments and has shown his accolades in closing the devolution file is a testament to that compliment. But yet it’s apparent that this noble gesture seems to stop at the door of this Assembly, and I feel that Members of the House, because of this scenario, are not part of this Cabinet and this Premier’s master plan, and I think this has to be brought up to the attention of all.
Mr. Chair, in the end, although ratepayers, as I said, did benefit from this hasty and non-transparent decision and circumvented the consensus government, I’m hoping that through this dialogue, through this sharing of information and of my opinion and my concern, that we have not struck an awful chord within the consensus style government because clearly, by way of action, this did occur. Thank you, Mr. Chair.