Jane Groenewegen

Mr. Speaker, I’d like to read for the record today the report of the review of the 2008–2009 Draft Main Estimates from the Standing Committee on Priorities and Planning.

Introduction

The Standing Committee on Priorities and Planning is pleased to present its Report on the Review of the 2008–2009 Draft Main Estimates, which took place between March 31 and April 11, 2008.

The committee’s mandate includes the overview of the budget and fiscal framework. This report therefore focuses on government-wide implications of the proposed Main Estimates. Specific comments on individual departments are...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to seek unanimous consent to go back to item 7, oral questions.

Yes. I’d like to ask the Premier: going forward, what areas or avenues does he see available to him to set the example as the Premier of this government to provide more opportunity for a government of inclusion?

There has been a lot of emphasis put on changing the way we do business. The reason why I referenced those four committees is because they are strategic initiative committees that are supposed to take the strategic priorities of this government that we collectively agreed upon. These were formed after that to try and bring focus to the various Cabinet committees. We don’t want to sit on every Cabinet committee, but some we have requested, and we have met with no favourable response, no agreement. It is an interesting dynamic.

When I was in my Member’s statement referring to the fact that maybe...

There may be more to be said about what’s not in this budget than there is to say about what is in it. Some of the Budget Address could have been well spent explaining the rationale for the cuts and job reductions so that Northerners could understand the big picture. What we heard were vague metaphors, analogies and hard-to-understand riddles. If we can’t understand the communication on this side of the House, how is the public supposed to make sense of it?

Speaking of the big picture, that is something this budget missed all together.

I wasn’t planning to ask any more questions, but after the Finance Minister offered to let Mr. Ramsay help him write his next Budget Address, for one minute I thought he was serious. I thought I had seen a little evidence of something called working together. I believed him, and then he said, of course, “Oh yeah, I won’t be the Finance Minister next time.”

I don’t know who the Premier and Finance Minister hired to write his speech this year, but we seem to be having some trouble with the language in it. We’re having a little difficulty understanding it. As Mr. Bromley said, maybe we’re just...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. If the Premier didn’t have time to put together a budget that was going to be palatable, that was going to be reasonable, then we should have gone with the status quo. What we’ve ended up with is something not very acceptable. I know we asked for a compressed process. We expected better than this. We didn’t get it.

Would the Premier agree to return to an interim status quo budget until such time as we can come together and not take these very, very drastic measures that are proposed in this budget?

The Premier refers to getting a seat at those FPT tables. I would like to suggest that all that money that is spent to take Ministers, deputy ministers, officials down to all those FPT meetings, which they run up and down the country going to, is of limited benefit to this government. We’ve got huge problems and issues that we have to work out right here at home. Maybe Ministers would have more time to pay attention to what’s going on in the Northwest Territories if they weren’t running off to every city in the country, getting together with FPT Ministers. I would suggest that they are of...

Mr. Speaker, I think that the Premier has now pretty well heard consistently from most of the Members of this House that there’s some unhappiness over here about the consultation and the communication since the 16th Assembly took office. Now, I don’t want to say that this is a universal problem. I mean, certainly some Cabinet Ministers we’ve been working with have been doing a great job. They get back to us. They communicate.

But how we communicate and work together as Cabinet and committees and in that structured, formal framework that we work within.... Collectively, there has been something...

Mr. Speaker, this is a budget session, and I want to talk about the budget information that was tabled in this House yesterday.

Mr. Speaker, we talk about our unique style of consensus government, and there is an anomaly in that system. As soon as we choose the seven from among us, they are assigned areas of responsibility on behalf of MLAs and the residents of the Northwest Territories.

But at some point, they become the equivalent of a minority government and take on the characteristics of a governing political party, complete with party discipline, solidarity, confidentiality. They clearly...