Thank you, Madam Speaker. Madam Speaker, this is the Northwest Territories and we do things a little different up here. The way we live, work, and govern together is different than southern Canada. It's a product of a different history.
Madam Speaker, the North continues to be a place of unrivalled opportunity. We're open for business, adventure, and life. We want to grow our population and our economy. During the budget address, the Minister of Finance stated the primary economic driver for the NWT economy will be government investment. I would agree that this is the case, at least for the short term, until we further diversify our traditionally resource-based economy.
As long as government investment is driving the economy of the Northwest Territories, the government has an obligation to ensure that we maximize the benefits of this investment for Northerners. This is what we meant when we agreed that adopting a benefit retention approach to economic development would be a priority of this 19th Assembly. This means we cannot settle for -- wait, Madam Speaker, this is my 2020 budget address or maybe a 2021 or a 2022. They all kind of start to blend together, much like our main estimates over the years.
I start to feel like we're in our own version of the movie Groundhog Day, Madam Speaker, and I hated that movie.
Madam Speaker, ultimately this is a business as usual budget, a status quo budget that does not serve us at a time where we need to innovate and transform. It should create a vision, know where we want to go, and plan on how to get there. I get that we're only here for four years but our budget needs stars that are so effective that the next Assembly wants to carry them forward to build on our success. That got me thinking, Madam Speaker - how can I do my budget address a little different this year and maybe help break the Groundhog Day.
Cycle and together build a better blockbuster.
I want to start with a positive, to pay some gratitude to the other side of this House, and then I want to focus on three things I think would have helped this government release a blockbuster less reminiscent of Groundhog Day.
As a promised start, some gratitude. Madam Speaker, I want to highlight the bold move taken by the finance minister in the fall when she broke the cycle of a traditionally unrealistic large capital budget that once required an even larger borrowing plan commitment. This was once used as promises for political gain, or an easy way to say yes to everything while accomplishing very little of it. This change will not only make the GNWT more fiscally responsible, it will also enable the difficult conversations about what actually is a priority of this government. So kudos to the other side.
Madam Speaker, I would also like to acknowledge the work of staff across government who have worked hard to prepare the budget within the parameters they were given.
So three things to build a better blockbuster. First is a budget. You don't make a movie with the same budget you made the last one. You build a new budget that makes sense for the landscape, stars, and potential return on investment of this one. And that brings me to government renewal.
I want to see results-based budgeting where we make budget decisions that position us with flexibility, strength, and courage to choose wisely and be well prepared to shift. What we have here is starting from what we've always done and then adding some forced growth. This shift is reliant on a successful government renewal. I support the intent of government renewal, Madam Speaker. We need to be able to cut the redundancies and increase the effectiveness of public dollars to achieve our goals. This budget is missing any visible success of government renewal. While I support the intent, I do not feel a sense of urgency that needs to purvey government renewal exercises.
I hope the government renewal process will evolve GNWT program evaluations to focus on outcomes and value for dollar of the programs, but that needs to hurry up and show some results or it will sadly fade away.
Ensuring the government is using public funds to better serve NWT residents is half of the picture. Revenues are the other piece of government renewal, or building our blockbuster. The GNWT was built over decades during a different time and has today given risk aversion the starring role in an action adventure world. This government needs to raise revenues for a more balanced approach to fiscal sustainability. We need to build a bustling North with population growth and a flourishing private sector, achieved by government getting out of the way of business, diversification, and proactively helping people figure out how to make their plans fly rather than asking if they were ever meant to fly in the first place.
Where there is a will, there is a way, Madam Speaker. Sometimes we just need to step out of the box of how it's always been done and out of the cubicle from where it's always been done. Empower staff to get out of the office. You do not change lives from a cubicle, Madam Speaker. Be present and be proactive.
The second piece of building a blockbuster is supporting characters. Any good movie has a cast, not just one character. The GNWT's leading support characters are municipalities and NGOs. This budget does not go far enough to begin to close the municipal funding gap. Closing the municipal funding gap would bring 220 more jobs into the territory spread across every single community. So closing the municipal funding gap is huge. It means jobs, recreational programming, and infrastructure that have direct impacts on mental and physical health - the frontline operations that build connected, vibrant communities, Madam Speaker.
Our NWT NGOs struggle to keep the lights on and are ones the GNWT relies on the most when it comes to frontline service delivery to our territory's most vulnerable residents. Multiple GNWT departments are transitioning to application-based funding pots aimed at NGOs. But empowering them to keep the lights on and keep staff paid is just as important as program dollars. One-time increases, far below inflation, do not keep these organizations running. So I agree with colleagues that inflationary increases need to be delivered to all NGOs this government relies on and on an annual basis if this change is going to be sustainable.
Honourable mention here, Madam Speaker, is Jordan's Principle. This territory's incredibly reliant on Jordan's Principle. Our office has helped residents access Jordan's Principle supports for treatment, rent, food, while communities across the territory rely on them for so much more. Jordan's Principle floods tens of millions of dollars into this territory every year. If Jordan's Principle funding were cut to our territory, it would suffer immensely and this needs to be better tracked.
Madam Speaker, the third piece this blockbuster needs is a star. A star is the character almost everyone can connect with, leave something behind, and ultimately you don't forget them. Hansard could tell you who the star of this Assembly has been, but this budget could not. This term, where the most regular thing we did as Regular MLAs, was host housing-themed days on top of housing-themed days. Social development made housing its one and only priority on top of its regular work, and we'll continue to table another housing report this sitting. This week alone, Regular Members spent three days in Committee of the Whole reviewing the Housing NWT budget - the fifth smallest budget of the government. And a small fraction of the health budget. We have worked hard to force the hand of the government in choosing its blockbuster star, but this script has no star, no legacy. On multiple occasions, Cabinet Members have said housing is a priority of this Assembly, but talk is cheap and houses are not. True, Madam Speaker, this Assembly has invested more in housing than any other but when you're starting from crumbs, a cookie looks like a feast.
Let's be honest, I would have loved an NWT version of the ambitious action adventure Nunavut 3000, but we're celebrating a hundred houses, the same number of houses Nunavut has built every year for the last three years in a row. Housing NWT is not sustainability funded. With inflation and rising cost of living, access to affordable housing in the NWT has gotten worse. Housing drives economic development, education, health outcomes, population growth, and climate change mitigation and adaptation. The impacts are huge. Housing NWT needs to shift, evolve, be bold, and also be prepared to let go.
I know that April 1st is supposed to bring a new era of Housing NWT but I'm not confident the changes will go far enough to address the NWT's affordable and accessible housing crisis. I want to know the future of housing funding models and if they will include realistic and sustainable O and M, the evolution of autonomy of Indigenous governments and organizations and empower housing delivery, if unintended policy barriers will be addressed, if shelters and safe spaces will be fairly funded, and if the vision of Housing NWT will be as ambitious as it needs to be to carry the starring role.
So there you have it, my three recommendations to help turn Groundhog Day into a blockbuster.
Madam Speaker, I took a risk today, loosely comparing a very serious budget to a movie production, but both ultimately are big business where people's livelihoods rely on their successes.
Today my message is this: Take risks, shake up the way things have always been done, don't forget about your supporting characters, and choose a star, build a legacy.
Madam Speaker, this budget is not a done deal, and I look forward to the continued budget negotiations of 2023. Thank you, Madam Speaker.
