Thank you, Madam Chair. My comments focus on the chapter on looking ahead on page 11 of the budget address. The looking ahead section looked fairly uncertain and bleak.
That’s how I would characterize it. Our aspirations as a territory, our expenditures are growing, especially in the small communities where we want to have programs and services. In some we aren’t able to do it because of the rising cost of doing business outside of the larger centres; for example, having a nurse in Colville Lake, the operations expenditures of having one nurse in Colville Lake or an RCMP in our small communities. I think there are about 10 or 11 communities without full-time RCMP members and there are about eight communities without nurses. So it’s bleak for us in the small communities. There are certain programs and services we aren’t able to do because of the cost of having that. So there are only certain programs and services that are in operation in some communities. Some communities say good luck, see if you can get it.
The revenue is not there for us. The Minister is right when he stated that our expenditures cannot be above our revenue. Our revenue right now, our biggest source for government comes from the federal government. That’s what it says; $1.8 billion comes from one source. These are the transfers the government gets in various departments. Our small population of 42,000, maybe growing less now, because the population is also a contributing factor to our territorial formula financing, so if we don’t have the numbers, we don’t get the amount of money that we want to have. There’s a plan in place to bring in 2,000 people by 2019-20. That’s something that we need to look at again, to see if it’s realistic, if it’s something that’s achievable.
I want it to say in the budget that it’s really about tightening our belts with what we have now. We should be happy with what we have now, be happy with the programs we have. It means that we have a huge number of government employees, well over 5,000. There are 2,400 government employees in Yellowknife alone. That’s a whole industry itself. So it’s self-sustaining here. I wouldn’t mind having a tenth of that in the Sahtu. That is a self-sustaining industry itself, government employees, so it’s a high number here. We are talking about devolution, decentralization, so I am looking ahead to see what this is going to be like in the Sahtu communities or the communities outside of Yellowknife in regards to not going to the edge, as the Minister has said, not to be pushed over the edge. Some of our communities know that already. Some of the programs are not offered in our small communities and we fight for them.
One of the things that we need to look at is the economy. That is what pays for programs and services. The economy right now is not very good. It’s okay down in this area because you have your activities around the mining and diamond mines. That brings in a lot of dollars into the southern parts of the Northwest Territories. The economy is good here, so good that the Premier wants to consider
looking at a road to the mine. He wants to look at 150 kilometres, do a study, from Yellowknife to one of the mines. That’s how good the economy is with the mines.
We need the economy up in our region where the unemployment rate is fairly high. The employment rate is below 50 percent in four of my Sahtu communities, except Norman Wells, which is an oil and gas town. That oil and gas town really drives the unemployment rate down and it’s a good source of business for people that are working.
Looking ahead, I guess, we really have to look at some of the major factors in our budget. The one right now that I would like to have some discussion, hopefully before this Assembly is concluded, is the cost of living in our small communities in the Northwest Territories. We have the NTPC and NUL, I think it’s called – Northland Utilities. There are two distributors of energy power into the communities. The high cost of power to our communities… We have to have some good news as to the petroleum products and lowering the costs of heating fuel, gasoline. We just recently had a report out by the Auditor General on the Nutrition North Program, the cost of food, transporting food into our small communities. Economic activity in our small communities, we need to look at how we get costs down in our small communities.
Another big factor is the growing sensation of having GNWT employees hired. When do we stop and say that’s enough, there are more employees than the population? When do we say enough is enough and how can we have this discussion here? In that sense, I look forward to some discussion and how we start doing some of the things in our communities more efficiently and effectively with the type of money that’s coming into the Northwest Territories?
Again, 1.2 billion of our dollars come from the federal government. Basically we are like a provincial type of government but we don’t wear the coat of a provincial government; we’re still a territorial government as the budget tells us. The reality that we may be able to control all things is not quite enough to where we think we should be getting more of the dollars to serve our people, based on the remoteness and the type of living that we have in the Northwest Territories.
I guess for me it’s a real shift in responsibility in our communities. I guess one of the things is to accept the realities of living in Colville Lake or Deline and say this is the cost of living here, or do we change that, or do we change that to something that may not be real?
I want to just say those are my comments to the Minister, Madam Chair. Thank you.