Bob Bromley

I have to say, going back to some of the remarks I’ve heard from the Minister and the Premier.... I don’t, of course, debate the need to live within our means and so on. That’s not what this is about. This is about clarity and communication.

The public has gone to hire economists from afar to try and make sense of this murkiness, and it’s still not clear. Somehow there seems to be a gap between the Premier’s understanding of the situation and the public’s. Will the Premier address this gap and make it plain?

Mr. Speaker, I acknowledge I’ve had some remarks from the Premier. I also acknowledge that there’s tons of information out there — big thick documents. Certainly the Budget Address I find very murky. It basically talked about the top 6 or 8 per cent of the budget. I’m asking the Premier: will he provide the public with exactly the information on which the projections were based — the graph and the sources of it, the tables that show the decline in revenue and the sources of the decline in revenue and so on, the exact basis? In science, conclusions are not acknowledged until they're duplicable...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to recognize the family of the late Jim Peterson, who are in attendance today. I appreciated the remarks this morning. Welcome to the Peterson family.

Mr. Speaker, the three most important things in the basic cost of living for all our residents are food, energy and housing. This Assembly has made it a priority to address the soaring cost of living. Because our small communities have little economic development, they must be subsidized at increasing costs, with significant implications to our residents and to the GNWT budget. In the budget presented, I see little comprehensive and effective government action to actually address these costs. I want here to suggest a basis on which to move forward on this key issue.

When basic needs are derived...

Mr. Speaker, I hear a tendency to think as if this is a complex situation and so on, and big agriculture…. I’m sure there is a role for agriculture here, and we obviously need to support it a lot more. But there are a lot of local situations that could be addressed without that.

You know, we’re pouring huge subsidies into our communities because of these situations.

Will the Minister also commit to looking into requiring some service from the people that we’re subsidizing and that are able to take advantage? In other words, we cannot continue to support rising costs. Why not start requiring some...

Mr. Speaker, that’s certainly a project that I’m aware of. It’s pretty modest; it’s not taken up very well. I’ve been working with the community of Fort Providence myself indirectly through non-government organizations on these issues. Every community is full of people that require food, so we need a comprehensive, well-thought-out, well-laid-out program across the Northwest Territories that encourages this. There are challenges in different areas, but there are huge opportunities just the same.

Once again I’m asking what new comprehensive programs are being put in place with this budget to...

That would certainly be clear language and understandable, which would be a refreshing change here. Just one more clarification. On B-5 there's a graph in the Budget Address, and it lists components of change, strategic initiatives and other initiatives that I think total $72 million according to the paragraph under “Expenditures” on the same page. What's the difference here between strategic initiatives and other initiatives, and are those outlined somewhere that's accessible?

Just briefly on the clarity and so on of the budget, I'd like to just get some clarity. The Minister says that the GNWT intends to realign $135 million in expenditures. For clarification, does that mean cut, or is he realigning it some other way? Maybe disappearing it or something.

...to this projection. So I ask the same question again.

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Finance and the Premier. Again, because of communications or lack of same, our public has been left trying to sort of work by Braille, if you will, to figure out on what basis this government has made projections that put us into deficit a couple years or three years into our term here. This has obviously cost the public and non-government organizations, volunteer groups, a lot of resources as they try and solve this mystery.

Will the Premier commit to immediately providing the public, who are our partners and our clients, with full information...