Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I just want to say that in our final budget for 2015-16 I’m glad that the Minister and the finance staff were able to maintain our targets and not have a deficit budget this fiscal year. But they do correctly point out that as we try to take advantage
of federal programming, we are reaching our borrowing limit, so those are challenges there. When it comes to deficits and borrowing, I know that the outlook of government is a little bit different than a business. However, it’s still debt. But at the same time, I believe that for the benefit of the communities and the people of the Northwest Territories that we do have to do what Cabinet is doing and going to Ottawa and saying look, we do need more borrowing room, we do have an infrastructure deficit, and we do want to stimulate our economy. For these reasons I’m supportive of us looking at further debt. Whether it’s an additional billion, I’m questioning that right now, but I do know that in order to move forward we will need more debt. I’m convinced by the Minister and his staff that we do have the capacity to handle that debt. But it’s in the news, like Ontario, theirs is out of control in the next three or four years there. They’re not too sure what to do. But for us, I don’t see that kind of imminent situation that we’re in, but we are acquiring more debt. I don’t know if additional billing is the answer, but certainly we do need more, because I know that these investments will protect the Northwest Territories, our communities and regions in the future.
I just want to say that this week has been a particularly busy one, especially with the onset of preparing for the budget, and I forgot to mention my favourite two words in my three Member’s statements this week, which is Highway 7. But of course, I’m well aware that this is an operation and maintenance budget, but I’m certain that maybe at the appropriate time when we’re discussing the Department of Transportation, I’ll be looking at what kind of an additional or O and M expenditures will be happening with Highway No. 7.
Some of the things that are concerning in my region and communities, in the small communities, most particularly Fort Liard, was about retaining our mental health workers, even nursing staff. I’m not too sure what strategy government has in retaining staff in the smaller communities. I believe that we need some kind of retainment strategy. In fact, it’s probably not only my riding or region that sees it all the time, is that somebody gets hired, they move to a smaller community and, for whatever reason, probably less than a year, they’re moving out and we’ve got to restart everything. In the meantime, it’s our constituents and people who suffer because those resources aren’t there to help them, particularly in Fort Liard. It’s almost every summer for the past four or five years, a mental health worker quits or moves on by May or June, and throughout the summer months there have been several incidents, some of them fatalities, and people are grieving, people needed additional help and the resources weren’t there. It’s never planned that way, of course, but I do believe we need consistent mental health workers and nursing in our
small communities. I don’t know if there’s a strategy to retain workers in our smaller communities.
In the budget it speaks about the addition of five additional government service officers, and I think that’s excellent because we’ve seen how some of these workers really help out the residents of the smaller communities, able to fill out forms, address different departments and handle a lot of those issues. I just want to say that before the government services officers were there, the residents would actually – for me anyway – wait until I do my community tours, go into the communities and ask me specifically about which forms to fill out, how do they address these concerns. Now with the resident government services officer and with all the training that they’re doing, they’re our new front-line workers, they’re handling a lot of these routine administration questions by the residents and the things that government needs. I’m really grateful for their work, and I look forward to the other five as they do the work for our smaller communities.
I know that with our Aboriginal and Regional Recruitment Strategy, we continue to move forward with that, and I see a little bit of improvement, but we’re still stuck at around our 30 percent Aboriginal employment numbers. But certainly I know that Human Resources is doing all they can to hire from the North, but I still see some barriers. People are telling me they are having a hard time getting their foot in the door of government. I hope we continue to be aware of this, reassess it and continue to work and improve on our Aboriginal Recruitment Strategy.
One of the other things education-wise is my region supports junior kindergarten. I’m pleased that Premier McLeod and Minister Beaulieu were able to come with me as we were able to view some of the junior kindergarten in the Nahendeh riding. We saw how it works, but I think the parents, the teachers, everybody likes how it works but I really believe there’s a need for further support. I know the concept is that as there are more students in your school, funding will go up because we fund districts per capita. So it’s self-sustaining. I know that the Province of Ontario, when they implemented their junior kindergarten about 10 years ago, there was actually a $1.5 billion investment. They provided the extra facilities and extra teachers. We only committed to the increased revenue from increased students. I don’t think that’s manageable, Madam Chair.
So I’m looking at this government, as we review junior kindergarten, to say, if we’re going to continue to go down this road, we will need to provide additional resources. I am saying they will need more teaching ability or teachers who are specialized to deliver junior kindergarten. I will be speaking later on in this session about that.
For the smaller communities, we have to continue our small community job creation programming. I see that’s still on the books. They considered cutting that back, but I’m glad that it’s still there. It’s very important to the small communities to continue our job creation programming.
I see that our economy is in a bit of a decline. The Nahendeh region has always largely been government-dependent, so should we start looking at increasing fiscal restraint? We really have to balance it off, the ability of people having jobs and sustaining their own small community economies. With that, I conclude. Thank you.