Statements in Debates
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We are at work on the Heritage Fund and we will come to a successful conclusion. If I have misstated the support for junior kindergarten, I will use other examples of the input and involvement and significant influence that MLAs have on this process overall.
We agree there are too many fly-in/fly-out workers, which is why we struck a high level committee. We set a target of trying to increase our population by 2,000 in five years, and one of the things we want to look at – there are a number of things; there are four things, actually, we want to look at – the fly-in/fly...
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I thank the Member for his comments on the Heritage Fund. We just remind the folks that are listening that this is what we do agree on. We agree on a Heritage Fund because we spent three years in the 16th Assembly putting a bill into place that would give us the legal authority and looking forward to the day that devolution would be upon us. We know we have to put money aside and the one figure that the Member didn’t say, and there were some folks that said it, more than one, and more than one community, that we shouldn’t put any aside, that we need it all today, but...
The government, of course, stands ready to work with the affected communities in the affected areas where there have been fires in the previous year. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
ITI has put on, and will continue to put on, workshops to assist communities and interested individuals on the ins and outs of the morel mushroom harvest, both in terms of the actual harvesting and then looking to the secondary piece, which of course is marketing the product. Thank you.
Thank you. That, of course, is a given. We have a very able group of MLAs that bring forward those opinions and, yes, I will do the rounds. In the first budget dialogue and the feedback sessions we had, for example, we talked about where we should put our focus with the limited funds that are available, and they gave us some good advice that we’ve built into our first budget and our second budget. We’ve received some very helpful advice on this go around, as well, including on the Heritage Fund. So, yes, we will obviously, and clearly, commit. We always take that feedback into consideration...
Thank you, Madam Speaker. In our system of government, we do annual budgets and the government puts a budget before the House. In effect, the government proposes and the Legislature disposes.
We started this process, as the Member said, many long months ago to set this budget in place. We’ve talked about what we were putting forward as what in our estimation was the best way to move forward to balance all the demands with expenditures, revenues, projects, infrastructure versus programs and services, all those issues. We have put before this House a document that lays that out, and now we’re...
Thank you. I don’t think it’s a case of anybody being bad guys. We are looking at a budget. We agree on the Heritage Fund, we agree on keeping the money out of programs and services, we agree to put some in the Heritage Fund, some in capital and some for debt repayment. Now we’re having a spirited, healthy debate about how much and how do we manage that along with all the other obligations we have and the factors and the variables we have to look at that are financial pressures on us.
In terms of corporate income tax, as we’ve laid out a number of times, it’s a very complicated process. The...
No, we did not ignore that request. We have spent a lot of time consulting, working with committee on the main estimates that are before this House. In my budget address, we laid out what we used in calculating and determining that budget, and one of those factors was as we looked at all the variables that are before us, the challenges, the financial issues, we saw the way forward as a government with 5 percent, recognizing that we had to meet these other objectives as well.
The committee recommended to us 25 percent. We heard that, as well, in other parts of the territory as well as we heard...
Thank you. The goal that we have is to stay on a fiscal path that we’ve laid out for ourselves, a sustainable path. We’ve had discussions, and very clearly, as we go forward with the budget that’s before this House, it’s going to require about a $20 million reduction of government services. We have to find the money to meet all these things we said we would do. If we want to in fact add to the mix, the 25 percent, then we have to find roughly another $10 million. If we want to do the Heritage Fund, the 25 percent, plus other committee asks, then that number goes up to $40 million. So, we will...
Madam Speaker, we have undertaken consultation. This is now my sixth budget as Finance Minister. In the last government, in fact, we did consultation, but it was based on Yellowknife. We’ve gone around the territory now to talk about the budget and budget consultation. As I pointed out in the communities, as well, there’s a $1.6 billion budget we are talking about. The resource revenue piece is $45 million. It’s a significant issue, but it wasn’t the only issue by far in terms of sheer quantum and we had ranging discussions about other things, about the future of the Northwest Territories...