Thank you, Mr. Chair. My comments are similar to those of my col
leagues, but I’d like to
make a number of comments on this budget. I think I have to start with the Stanton Hospital Project. I look at the Minister’s opening comments and he talks about funding for the renovation of the Stanton Territorial Hospital Project. According to the newspaper a week or so ago, it’s a brand new building and I thought I heard the Minister, in response to Mr. Bromley, state that we’re going to have a new hospital. So, I’m totally confused now. I’m thoroughly looking forward to the briefing, which the Minister said we’re having at the rise of the House. I look forward to finding out whether or not we are again getting information through the paper that we should be getting through the Minister. But I’d appreciate a confirmation as to whether this project is a new stand-alone building or a renovation of the old building. I think the Minister mentioned that the old building might be used for Aurora College. so we have conflicting messages big time here.
I also want to state, and I’ve expressed these to the Minister in a couple of messages, but this Stanton project is a P3 project and it has the potential to run off the rails and to put us into a greater financial hole to that than which we think we are in already, and I would like to state that I fervently hope that this
project goes well, but I keep being advised from constituents of projects across the country that are P3 projects, especially health P3 projects, hospitals or health centres, which are fraught with all kinds of pitfalls. You know, we keep getting assured that we have this in place, we have that in place, we’ve got a policy, we’re doing this, we’re doing that, but we still end
up
with
financial
overruns,
financial
expenditures which are not expected, and this project, I thin
k it’s been labeled the largest project
that this government has ever done or is going to do. It’s one that’s going to require extreme monitoring, and I just hope that we are not just saying yeah, yeah, yeah, we know about the possibilities for error, but that we are seriously expecting and monitoring for errors
and ensuring that they don’t happen. It’s
one thing to say yes, it might happen, but it’s another to really look at it and make sure that we do everything properly so that we don’t get ourselves into hot water.
I am disappointed in the capital budget. The community infrastructure listed in the budget is $28 million. It’s been $28 million for probably as many years as I’ve been here, and in that time communities have accepted and taken on more and more community infrastructure, and yet the funding for them to either build new infrastructure or keep the old infrastructure running has stayed the same and it’s well beyond the time that community infrastructure funding increased. I keep hearing that, yes,
maybe there’s been a study and maybe it’s
going to increase, but there’s no evidence of that in the ‘16-17 Capital Budget and the government needs to seriously think about an increase in infrastructure funding for communities in the ‘17-18 Capital Budget.
I am very pleased to see the planning study money for the two schools in Yellowknife. I’m very pleased to hear the Minister confirm that in his opening remarks, but in general, I support Mr. Bromley’s position that the capital funding for education infrastructure has been woefully inadequate over many years and we have schools everywhere that either need replacement and/or need refurbishing; they need a mid-
life retrofit and they’re just not in the
capital plan. We struggled big time to get these two projects and get planning money in the budget for these two projects and yet these two schools have been both kicking around the capital plan for about 10 years and there are many other schools in other communities that are in the same boat. They’re looking fo
r a replacement; they’re looking for a
retrofit and they’re not there. So, the government has to do a better job of analyzing the education infrastructure needs and making sure it gets into the capital plan.
I am pleased to see that there is money in the budget for an extended care facility. It’s not going to be in the hospital. So, I’m very pleased to see that we are planning to provide some kind of a facility for
extended care. I’m given to understand that it is possible with the Aven’s proposal that the department, Health and Social Services, will be talking to Avens about potentially combining with Avens to run an extended care facility, and that’s great news. I think if that can work, it’s certainly going to assist Avens with their proposal for their expansion project, and Lord knows we need more rooms for seniors. We definitely need more capacity for seniors, whether it’s assisted living or extended care or just supported living.
I’m concerned about housing. I know that we’re not approving an expense in this budget, but the proposed housing expenditures are listed in this capital budget and there is a need to look again at the housing that we provide in all of our communities, but particularly in Yellowknife. We don’t have enough public housing units across our territory. I realize that the federal money is decreasing, but we have a population that is struggling and it goes to the cost of living, among other things, and this government somehow has to start recognizing that we need more public housing units or we need to assist people with their housing costs somehow. We’ve made a few steps in that direction, but it’s not enough and there needs to be an analysis of the housing units that we are providing, how it fits with the needs in each and every commu
nity. I think that’s done quite regularly,
but we don’t see any change in the number of units in each community and we have to increase the housing units in every community in the territory. But again, more specifically for me, in Yellowknife.
I find that this capital plan has too much of an emphasis in the Transportation department and I realize that that has to do with the Build Canada Plan, but there are other opportunities in the Build Canada Plan for different projects. The government has chosen to put all of the Building Canada Plan funding into transportation and into roads and we have to make a change to that. There’s an opportunity to use Build Canada Plan funds for energy projects, and the government is choosing not to do that, even though Members have stated the need for energy projects for quite some time.
I am disappointed that this budget has not got any concrete expenditure for a power project. Our power costs are admittedly high, and everybody you talk to says the power costs are the biggest expense that we have, the biggest impact on our cost of living, and yet in the eight years that I’ve been here we have not had a project that will effectively reduce the cost of power over the long term. We have lots of subsidies, but subsidies run out and we need to start putting projects into our capital plan that are going to affect our power production and our power costs to the individual.
Lastly, I just want to make a comment on a couple of health centres. The Simpson Health Centre, I support the need for the Simpson Health Centre to
be brought back onto a decent timeline. The information that we received in our presentation was that it was scheduled for the year ’22-23, when a planning study was mostly done last year and it was scheduled for ’17-18 in the information from our capital plan last year, this current capital plan. Same thing with the Tulita health centre. Apparently the planning was mostly done and it also, in this capital plan, has been punted to the year ’22-23. Both of these projects need to be brought back to fiscal year ’17-18 and the next capital plan. We need some commitment from the government that the next capital plan will include these two projects.