Thank you, Mr. Chair. It’s an honour to actually give some general comments and feedback on our last operations budget for the 17th Legislative Assembly. When you look at the budget and see all the work that’s been going on over the life of this Assembly and the collaboration that Cabinet and Regular Members and standing committees have worked on and addressed, it’s great to see things like the Economic Opportunities Strategy, the Mineral Strategy, as well as Early Childhood Development Action Plan, the Mental Health and Addictions Action Plan, as well as the Anti-Poverty Strategy, and even to a bigger extent the Education Renewal and Innovation taking the whole education system and trying to change it so that we can get more of our residents with quality education and also seeing the investments that we’ve had in early childhood development. Mind you, I know there have been a lot concerns about junior kindergarten and that focus should have went on the most critical years, which was from zero to two, to get our residents the development enhancement as they move forward going into school.
Another big thing I’d like to compliment the government on is the integrated case management support that we’re moving ahead with and taking a different approach in how we deal with our residents, whether it’s in the justice system that we have justice, health and education all working together to make people healthy and part of society again.
A couple other big things in here, being the Member for Inuvik Boot Lake and working with residents up in the Beaufort-Delta, is the Inuvik-Tuk highway. We’ve seen the benefits arising from that in terms of the economy, people working in the communities, fewer people going on income assistance, so some benefits from creating that infrastructure.
You’ve heard here today about the debt wall and the volatility in taxes and our revenues, and I’ll also do a plug here. I did a statement on it yesterday in the House, and that’s the Mackenzie Valley Fibre Optic Link. I think that will provide this government with the sustainable revenue not only for Inuvik but the Northwest Territories, and we won’t have to go through the ups and downs of wondering where we’re going to get our revenues from to take care of these $1.6 billion budgets. Not only that but I think as the cable is being laid right now, that the
government should start looking at how the fibre optic link is going to affect programs and services that we have in the Northwest Territories and the cost effectiveness of it. Do we have all the resources available in the communities that, you know, we can cut down travel costs, we can cut down shipping costs, things of that nature where we can see this $1.6 billion budget kind of lowered? When you listen to people in the public and you talk to people that are interested in this budget, we’ve got to ask ourselves, is this $1.6 billion budget sustainable? Are we going to be able to cover it next year and the year after that? Not to mention the forced growth that we see each year within departments.
Our government provides some of the best programs and services to residents of the Northwest Territories. When you look at it that way, you’ve almost got to ask yourself, is government making people rely on government instead of empowering them to go out and live healthy lifestyles? I was in Ottawa for the NWT Days and speaking with the Scandinavian countries and the way they work with their residents to get them healthy, to get them educated, to get the residents of those countries investing in the programs and services through a tax-based system. Somewhere along the line in the life of all governments, that was overlooked in terms of how we can do that. Obviously, I think it’s too late to even try to impose a tax because of the high cost of living that we have in the Northwest Territories right now.
We all know the economy is pretty slow right now. We have oil and gas companies that are not doing much exploration or work in the North. We see it in the Beaufort-Delta. We see it in the Sahtu. In times like this, I think that as a government we’ve got to start looking and focusing on our other big resource, and that’s the people, so that when oil and gas activity starts to increase again we’ll have educated, trained, skilled people in those areas that can take those jobs so we don’t get the fly-in and fly-out workers taking these jobs from our northern residents. I think in slow times like this that we’ve got to invest in our people to get them healthy and educated so when the economy picks back up, they’re ready to fill those roles, hit the ground running, which will have an impact on our income assistance, our housing and things of that nature.
A couple other things. I’m glad to see that this government is doing more investment in energy, commercial energy, as well as just the regular residents of the Northwest Territories, and looking at biomass, looking at ways we can decrease carbon emissions but also decrease the cost of living in the Northwest Territories. As I said earlier, the collaborative work that all Members did on such investments in prevention, promotion, health, education and training, I think over the last four years or three years, going into our fourth year
here, seeing those improvements and seeing the enhancements in those, and I know people of the Northwest Territories are very appreciative that we’re actually taking a different approach.
As I stated earlier, the integrated case management, I think, is going to prove to be a success in terms of working. But moving forward, even on that basis, doing an integrated case management, do we have the resources in place to assist those that are actually doing that type of work? I know it’s a new project and a new way of doing things, and I just want to make sure that as we progress and see how this is making people healthier and part of society, that any challenges that we see that we fix them up right now.
I was also glad to see the Western Arctic Centre for Geomatics up in Inuvik and putting that investment in place before the fibre optic link is up and running.
A couple things that need to be noted here is last summer, having that extreme fire season, the low water levels. Have we prepared ourselves to cover those costs should it happen again this coming summer, and do we have the borrowing capacity to do it and does that put us as a government at risk? That’s only the two that we know from last summer. Something else could happen: floods, other emergencies, Inuvik, Norman Wells has got gas issues. Something happened there. Do we have the money to bail these communities out?
A couple other things that I would have liked to have seen here. One, since we shut down Nats'ejee K'eh, the treatment centre and the mental health support that we have for our residents of the Northwest Territories and detox beds. Detox beds so we can observe patients who come off of substance abuse and see what kind of medical attention they need afterwards. Funding for the child and family services support system. As I mentioned, the Education Renewal Initiative, do we have the dollars to address those, you know? Those are some really big concerns of mine, because we don’t want to do things, change things and have them fail.
With that said, we talked about the increase in the debt wall, and if we do get that increase, it doesn’t mean that we have to spend it, you know? I know we have some plans on the go. We had the Premier make an announcement during NWT Days. If we do get that increase in debt wall, do we have to spend that money? Can we pay off the debt we currently have and continue to provide the programs and services that we do while also taking a practice on how we can spend dollars more efficiently?
We also heard about the increase in population. If we do get that increase, do we have the infrastructure in place? Do we have other programs in place? Licenced daycares? Do we have the housing in place for all these people coming in? If it
wasn’t for all the births over the last few years… We’ve seen interprovincial migration in 2013 of over 500 people. In 2014 it was over 600 people. Our budget has increased in that time by over $200 million. Health has increased substantially as well. I mean, we have to look at ways where we can be more efficient in how we run our programs and services in the Northwest Territories. Collectively, we’ve got to do that as 19 Members. We have to look at where we can make the necessary changes but also support the programs that are being brought forth and get everybody’s comments on those.
So, tough times ahead and I think that we shouldn’t leave this for the 18th Assembly and that we have to
start addressing some of these concerns now in the months that we have left in the 17th Assembly.
Thank you.