I join my other colleagues and question the need for the $150 million in cuts. I've been asking but I have yet to receive a satisfactory or detailed answer to how that number came about. Regardless, that's the number that they're sticking with. The exercise to find $150 million was a perfect opportunity to find efficiencies and streamline departments. If a corporation, which always has the bottom line in mind, wants to find efficiencies and improve operations and accountability, they will undertake an internal audit. Effective internal audits adhere to universally accepted best practices that require an objective and independent auditor who has the freedom to speak to every member of a department in confidence and provide an unbiased appraisal directly to a Minister.
Unfortunately, the approach that this government took was to give each department a reduction total and let them figure it out. What the departments came back with is what we’d expect: cuts to frontline staff and programs with no substantial changes in department structure or senior management staff. But really, what else could they do? The job of senior management is to run the departments efficiently. If that’s the case then they should have already found all the efficiencies and a different approach to the reductions should have been taken. By tasking the departments with this reduction exercise the government passively prioritized cutting spending through layoffs and program cuts over finding money through innovation, identifying efficiencies, and addressing the structural problems within departments.
I'm not opposed to the idea of reducing spending. Like my colleague Mr. McNeely stated, we can't just sit on our resources and wait for the next federal transfer payment. We can generate the revenue we need to provide services without attracting significant new investments in the resource extraction industry, and that requires us to make investments in transportation infrastructure. However, the manner in which the reductions were done has the appearance of favouring bureaucracy over efficiency. This Government can do better.
Now, Mr. Speaker, these are just my general observations as a Member of this Assembly six months into my first term, part way through my first budget session. So despite my criticisms, I'm still confident that we will ultimately be able to do good for the people of this Territory. I encourage Members on both sides to strive to work together so we can give our citizens the change they voted for. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.