Thank you, Madam Chair. Welcome to the Minister and his guests.
I’ll just start by saying I appreciated the budget as the Minister laid it out. I thought it was a reasonably good budget as far as it went. It was certainly a good budget speech, although we might want to think about how to present in additional engaging ways and response. But there was much that was unsaid as well. I don’t expect the Minister to be able to cover everything. But I want to acknowledge that it was a very frank and honest budget, acknowledging fully many of our challenges. The unsustainable nature of our current budgeting and fiscal situation was clearly laid out. Primarily, of course, our annual increase in expenses is five times or more greater than our annual increase in revenues, so that’s something that needs to be addressed.
I think I’m on record as supporting many of the initiatives that were highlighted in the address and are incorporated in the budget. The economic outlook as laid out is somewhat grim, and I think this budget goes some way to recognize those realities, although we’re still waiting to hear about our new borrowing limit and so on and discuss what we’ll do with that.
In some areas I see us trying to do the same thing hard. You know, this situation is being faced by many jurisdictions in Canada and globally and it’s related to how we’ve gone about business in the past, and I don’t think trying to do the same thing harder is necessarily the best response. I try to profile that in my approach to our House business.
The Minister mentioned a perfect storm of shocks. I think those things used to be rare. I remember when the term was coined, a perfect storm and a book that came out on the perfect storm. Unfortunately, that’s now becoming part of our everyday jargon. So when we budget, we must budget with the likelihood that these perfect storms will be coming more frequently when we do our fiscal planning and so on.
The Minister said no increase in taxes. You know, that’s the reality. I think we can do different things with taxes beyond just having no net increase, and I’d like to see this government wrestle with that a little bit one of these days soon.
Again, just for the record, the $1.1 million to the Wellness Court, I’m very appreciative of that and I’m glad to see that finally happening. The integrated approach to case management across departments, $440,000 I think that’s dedicated, is long overdue and well recognized by my colleagues and Cabinet. I’m glad to see we’re putting our toe in the water a little bit more firmly on that.
Employment service officers, support for seniors, all things that I support equally. The transfer of $1.6 million from ECE to the NWT Housing Corporation is something I very much appreciate. I think the government was listening when we brought up issues on that. I would like to see that built upon. I would like to see this as an initial effort, with some evaluation, of course. I think there’s an opportunity to improve our service to income assistance clients who are struggling with housing issues by putting our housing experts in charge and, through that, gaining some financial efficiencies as well.
The $1.1 million for Early Childhood Development is long overdue. I know my colleagues will recall when the House recommended and put forward $1.1 million, $1.3 million in the very first year of this Assembly. Nothing much happened with that, so my question to the Minister is: Is this finally going to do that work that we called for several years ago, and is it new dollars or is this just re-profiling existing dollars? That was not clear.
On the economy, the Economic Development Strategy, I support that work. Again, $2.5 million for a whole range of activities – agriculture, film, tourism, commercial fisheries, entrepreneurship – all of that great stuff, but is that just re-profiling those $2.5 million, or if those are new dollars, how much are new dollars? How much are we really putting money where our mouth is here?
Again, the 1.7 million new dollars, that’s clearly laid out in the budget for yet more mineral development strategies subsidies. I was able to attend a meeting of the Mineral Industry of Canada recently and they’re on the march for more and more subsidies, so their lobbying is apparently being successful in every jurisdiction, including the Northwest Territories. I think we want to take a close look at that. I actually don’t have difficulties if, in fact, it’s vetted through a public interest policy lens, and that’s not happening. This is being directed by industry and we know the pain that comes from that. We’re very familiar with that, probably more than any other jurisdiction. So again doing the same thing harder without learning the lessons.
Infrastructure comments in the budget, not really purvey of this budget specifically, but I think we want to be careful. I would say the cost of living should be our number one. Of course, this government is on record as believing that very large, expensive, rarely used infrastructure is the way to go, and of course, we have a record of
failure generating that economic development. Again, trying to do the same thing harder without any evidence of success just seems a bit crazy to me. Brick walls are easy to find; it’s tougher to find the right path.
Also, I would say something that’s not spoken to in the budget, other than note the quiet front on the fossil fuel development side, is we need to come to grips with the realities and become responsible leaders. We’ve devolved authority from Ottawa. Let’s now use it and provide, unilaterally if necessary, the leadership that Canada is looking for in the Northwest Territories. I know this is very hard for Cabinet and for my colleagues whose regions have come to believe the rhetoric that this is the answer to their economic development, but I think it’s abundantly clear now what the consequences of that are.
We’re looking now for leadership, somebody who’s actually willing to recognize the facts, recognize the science and recognize the opportunities. A renewable energy-based economy is one that provides distribution of benefits across our residents, do not accumulate to that 20 percent that’s getting ever richer while our 20 percent gets ever poorer. We are the most disparate jurisdiction in Canada, as we know. There are huge opportunities there, both for economic development and for things that strengthen our social structures, our employment opportunities and so on.
I recognize that this is going to be a painful process, but we’ve dealt with things like this before and shifted our society. I’m excited about the opportunities in the Northwest Territories to again provide leadership.
The low fuel prices right now provide for an opportunity to deal with the energy infrastructure that we have put on hold, some of our hydro resources and so on. Soaring costs were mostly related to those. At the same time, renewable energy costs are declining rapidly, 80 percent for solar, similar source of declines for wind and so on.
I’m out of time, but I’m generally pleased with this budget and the recognition of a number of things that my colleagues and myself have raised in the House and the realities that it recognizes. I’ll look forward to contributing to the debate over the next few weeks and look forward to some responses to a few questions.