Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As my colleague from Tu Nedhe-Wiilideh said yesterday in his reply to the Budget Address, he's one of the MLAs who represents small communities. I, too, represent small communities in my riding, and they face many challenges. Unfortunately, sometimes our concerns are not heard by Cabinet. I've said it before, and still firmly believe this.
Mr. Speaker, before I speak directly about the budget, I need to address one of the budget processes. The first issue is consensus government. On Thursday, we heard from the Premier that the budget is a product of consensus system. He went on to say we are doing business differently by strengthening consensus as one of our priorities.
When I read a summary of our system, it stressed that, compared to the party system, there is much more communication between Regular Members and Cabinet. All regulations, major policies, and proposed budgets pass through the Regular Members' standing committees before coming to the House. This gives Members a chance to make changes and put their fingerprints on initiatives before they're made public, unlike other systems. I'd like to add that, at the two consensus government meetings, 19 MLAs worked together for the benefit of all the residents of the NWT.
I understand that there are some very hard decisions to be made, and we elected the Cabinet to make them, but Ministers need to work with us all and not always take their direction from bureaucracy. To have true consensus government, we all need to be able to speak freely. Unfortunately, with Cabinet solidarity, it does not happen a lot. The Ordinary MLAs can speak freely and vote as we feel we need to. It is very significant when there is great agreement among Regular Members as we have now against this budget. We agreed, not because we have to but because we are listening to our constituents and listen to each other in doing the right thing.
With automatic Cabinet solidarity on every single issue, I do not feel this is a true consensus government. This is my experience as a Member and in my past 24 years, witnessing and working with it across the North. Do not get me wrong. I truly believe in consensus government if it's done correctly. I realize consensus government can be and is difficult sometimes. It takes a lot to achieve the goal. Consensus government, if done right, is the truest and purest form of government. All 19 of us need to listen and hear each other to be able to move forward. Unfortunately, I cannot say this is happening right now.
Mr. Speaker, I'm not saying it's strictly Cabinet's fault or the Regular Members' fault. It's all our faults. We need to work better together. Mr. Speaker, lack of communication is a major challenge. It seems, as soon as we elected Cabinet, it became an "us against them" approach. Major decisions are made without informing us until after the fact. I understand that quick action is required, but we should be informed as soon as possible. It seems that the attitude of my colleagues across the Chamber is that my job is to be the riding's MLA and help out my constituents; just leave the oversight work to Cabinet and the bureaucracy. That oversight work is our duty, and we are doing and we'll continue to do it.
I've heard and listened to people say you need to come down the hall more and speak to the Cabinet Ministers to get business done. I've done this with some success, and often without success. In my previous job, communications were an important part of my job. This involved me making contact in person or by the phone to see how things were going; however, they were also encouraged to contact me at least once a month. This is how we got business done for our residents. I strongly encourage the Minister to try this approach with us, the Regular MLAs.
Mr. Speaker, when I looked at the history of this government and its budgets we always spend during the good times and cut or make corrections in the hard times. We need to do a better job. This constant ebb and flow approach isn't the way to do things. Regular Members have been working with the government to get our financial house in order. There have been a lot of reductions, cuts, and corrections we have agreed to with our colleagues on the other side; for example, the 2016-17 Main Estimates shows a reduction of about $68 million. The Minister of Finance's 2016-17 Budget Address also stated: our target is $150 million in savings or new revenues to establish a short-term cash surplus by the end of the 18th Assembly. This budget does the heavy lifting. We have identified $53 million in expenditure reductions, or 3 per cent of the total operation budget, and are raising $15 million in new revenues over four years. This combination, expenditure management and increased revenue, brings us to a total of $68 million; 45 per cent of our target. In my books, this shows we are working with our colleagues.
On January 31, 2017, we heard the Premier say the budget process is always a balancing act. There are always more needs than there is money to meet them, and that there are always more wants on top of this. I have to partially agree with the Premier on this; there are needs versus wants in any budget. Last year we tried to remove cuts and reductions from the budget. This time around we tried to do something different. We spent countless hours looking at strategic planning we could recommend in these difficult times. We offered ideas and recommendations, recommending staff cuts of certain positions that would benefit the residents of NWT, what we recommended to only 1 per cent of the annual $1.7 million budget.
Mr. Speaker, as we started reviewing our second set of business plans, the one for this budget, I thought about what we as the 19 MLAs were trying to achieve. I reviewed our mandate, the promises we made to the people of the Northwest Territories. The more I look back at the process, the more I realize that we as ordinary MLAs have a difference of opinion with Cabinet Ministers on what needs to be done.
If you look at their ideas for cuts or corrections, as they call them, they are things that need to be done so we can fund mega projects such as hydro expansion, all-weather roads or capital purchases, whereas we, Regular Members, want modest investment that will ultimately save the government money and still meet the priorities set out in our mandate.
Unfortunately, we have limited success in our negotiation with Cabinet. In fact, the Cabinet's counter-offers were what the bureaucracy in Cabinet thought we wanted to hear. As we were going back and forth through the process I felt like a hungry Oliver Twist asking: can we have more, sir? It was very frustrating. The typical reply from the Finance Minister was that you should not be using credit cards to pay your bills. Unfortunately, sometimes you must do that to get on with your life. It isn't an easy decision, but sometimes you need to borrow to get ahead. In fact, this is the decision the government has made since 2008. Short-term borrowing is needed in the latter part of each fiscal year when the government's total annual spending is greater than revenue.
Why does this happen when the government has a surplus of $100 million or more in the operation budget every year? The Fiscal Responsibility Policy requires that half the capital or infrastructure projects are funded from the surplus of the operation budget. So the $100 million surplus is spent on capital programs, leaving only a modest supplementary reserve for operation emergencies.
Sometimes there's not enough money in the supplementary reserve to cover a big forest fire every year, for example. The resulting shortfall will be covered by short-term borrowing near the end of the year. There have been shortfalls like that every year since 2008, and they have added up. In the budget before us today, the government expects to borrow $305 million through March 31, 2018. Keep in mind this is a short-term event that repeats each year. On April 1st, the next year's funding is allocated and there is no short-term borrowing until much later that year. This keeps the interest costs down. During our Assembly we have reduced the amount of short-term borrowing, but we will not be able to bring it to zero that quickly without the loss of critical, important positions and programs.
Mr. Speaker, I am the second person to speak on the budget, and I'm going to focus my comments on a few areas. This is not to say that other areas are not a concern, but with limited time available these are the concerns I will focus on today.
In my reply to last year's budget I recommended that we ask the public service to come up with some money-saving ideas. To date, nothing has happened, to my knowledge. What I understand is that senior bureaucrats were given a percentage of their department's budget that they needed to save. Off they went. Whatever they presented at Cabinet came to us after corrections from Cabinet.
I firmly believe that if public service was given the opportunity to make suggestions on ways to make the government more efficient, we would save millions of dollars. I look at cell phones, as an example. In my life as a government official I got a cell phone with unlimited texting and calling. Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, I was able to get a cell phone not on the government's plan, but by doing this I save $30 a month compared to my colleagues and had a better plan that also saved the government money. If we have a thousand cell phones we could save $360,000 a year. Just one idea; maybe it works, maybe it's not. It is something to look at, at least.
I believe that there are hundreds, maybe thousands, of ideas for saving money out there. Another one is not wasting money at year end just because it's there to spend and you might not get it next year.
Mr. Speaker, in my time with the government I've seen departments begin amalgamation and splitting it up again, only to get back together again and splitting it up. My frustration is that the government says that this will save money in the long run, but the process does not make sense. I've heard that a zero-based review approach was used for the amalgamation, but in reality are just putting the departments together to save money.
When I asked about moving positions so that they can better serve the residents and save money I've been told it will be looked at in the future, but nothing happens. I encourage each department to take a zero-based budgeting approach; I believe this would help the departments get a true picture of costs and save money in the long run, plus it will make the government run more efficiently and effectively. We need to focus on form and function.
I have to say that my riding has agreed with implementing junior kindergarten from the beginning. Unfortunately, the plan to fully implement the program across the NWT this year will come at a cost to the schools I represent. They are looking at programs that we'll have to cut in order to offer the program. In one of the communities they may have to close down the high school program because they won't be able to offer a number of courses there, and have the students move to Fort Simpson. This is not good.
Mr. Speaker, we heard the Finance Minister say that the programs will be fully funded by the end of this term, so where is the funding for the junior kindergarten going to come from in the meantime? What does "fully funded" mean? In some of the smaller communities in my riding, they have one class with students in it from junior kindergarten right up to grade four or even grade nine. This is a challenge we are facing.
In the past two months I've had further questions for the Department of Education such as: has the department looked at other options in communities where existing options exist? Those might include current play-based care for four-year-olds that would be funded by the government and offered freely instead of school-based junior kindergarten. In other words, the funds follow the child.
Has the department looked at additional costs such as bussing, staffing, and for the child's safety that will come with this implementation? As well, we have some confusion about whether junior kindergarten will be voluntary for the school boards or whether they are required to offer it. Is it half-time, full-time, or voluntary? Mr. Speaker, there are a lot of unanswered questions that need to be answered before we can fully implement this program. When we do implementation, it must be fully funded from the start.
Mr. Speaker, I'm very happy to hear the government will increase funding to support employment opportunities for residents of the small communities. This is a great idea, but some communities cannot access it because they don't have the necessary funds to cover the 20 per cent required by the program. My idea may require some policy changes. Maybe we should look at providing the funding to community governments to create employment opportunities. This will get people off social income and help them feel better about themselves.
Mr. Speaker, the Auditor General's report on Department of Municipal and Community Affairs is very interesting. The department did not heed the Auditor General's caution that to fully address the issues raised by the audit the department must, one, take a proactive role with the community; fulfil its duties to ensure the proper delivery of essential services by communities in accordance with legislation, regulations, and policy; and, three, develop expert services in relationship-building as a core competency.
Mr. Speaker, it seems the department plans to cut a position is very much needed to help achieve this task. The argument that it can be done by somebody in Yellowknife or another regional centre is not a good one. This cut will hurt my riding and is out of line with the Auditor General's advice.
In the budget, the Minister talked about using lotteries to pay for the games that the NWT attends. It is frustrating because these games are the government's responsibility. It has either Sport North or the Aboriginal Sport Circle of the NWT to look after them. Now the government is looking to the lottery system to cover these costs. This is wrong. The government needs to fund these games and stop taking funds primarily earmarked for grass-root development. It is a sad day when we go down this road.
Mr. Speaker, I understand some positions need to be reduced or cut, but when you target certain positions at a community level, it goes against this Assembly's mandate and decentralization policy. Our mandate is to provide a strong relationship with community governments and stakeholders. Our mandate is to increase employment in small communities. Again, the bureaucracy in Cabinet seems to be out of touch with what is happening in the small communities and out of touch with our mandate.
I'm disappointed the government does not see the importance of fixing up the winter road or even a small section of the road. I'm talking about the Sambaa K’e road. We have approached the Minister of Transportation about this, but nothing has happened to date. The small investment we're asking for would help make the road safer and provide some needed employment to the residents of the community. Without this help, we can expect further problems like the recent case where patients were stuck on this road for six hours as they were going for an appointment.
Mr. Speaker, it should take a whole day's speech to address housing problems in my riding. However, with my limited time left, I will share an issue with you today. In one of my communities I represent, there are seven homes without running water, power, and heat except for a wood stove. They also have sewer challenges. These individuals live in third-world conditions, and we do nothing about it because they are in private homes. We tried and failed to get the government to put more money into housing. You can bet that, if any of my Cabinet colleagues lived in this situation, they would have the will to address this situation.
Mr. Speaker, in closing, I visited my six communities and schools in my riding and talked about the budget process and how I was going to address it. All the community councils and constituents I spoke to agree that it is hard to stand up and face the government, but it needs to be done for our residents. There are some positive things in this budget, but there are too many issues that are still not addressed. There are also many damaging cuts that the Finance Minister did not wish to address or highlight in his speech. The devil, as the saying goes, is in the details. Therefore, I cannot support the budget as presented. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
