Michael Miltenberger

Mr. Speaker, I move, seconded by the honourable Member for Yellowknife South, that Bill 25, Supplementary Appropriation Act (Operations Expenditures), No. 2, 2011-2012, be read for the first time.

Mr. Speaker, this bill makes operations appropriations for the Government of the Northwest Territories for the 2011-12 fiscal year. Thank you.

This is a longitudinal look at trends across the land in different areas. If you take this five-year increment and put the other three reports before them, you’d see, as the Member has indicated and as the report demonstrates clearly, a lot of our statistics continue to go in the wrong direction. We have some more current statistics on different areas that we could look at if the Member has a specific request, but in terms of gathering this kind of broad data that’s going to give us those trends and available for planning purposes, it’s those five-year increments that give us that kind of...

Mr. Speaker. I move, seconded by the honourable Member for Yellowknife South, that Bill 25, Supplementary Appropriation Act (Operations Expenditures), No. 2, 2011-2012, be read for the first time. Thank you.

The over $300 million that we do spend provides a very high level of service to the people. The Member’s point is a good one. We’ll never have enough hospitals, enough facilities to put people back together, to get them healthy once they’re sick, and the challenge is an unmet challenge, is the one that the Member lays out.

Will this be used? We’re going into an election here in a couple weeks. There will be in the next few months an Assembly elected and a Cabinet picked. Through the business planning process and the priorities of the next Assembly, they will be targeting where they think the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I wish to table the following two documents entitled Interactivity Transfers Exceeding $250,000 for the Period April 1, 2010, to March 31, 2011, and Northwest Territories Liquor Commission and Liquor Licensing Board 2010-2011 Annual Report.

Thank you. I will extend the commitment that I made to the Member for Nahendeh as well as the Member for Nunakput about discussing this issue with the deputy minister and the board chairs.

I’d like also to point out that we’re spending millions of dollars in electronic health records, medical records, telehealth. We have a very ambitious plan for a fibre optic line down the valley that would provide fibre optic link to all the communities and give them the best cutting-edge communication services so, in fact, their telehealth systems would work at full capacity. Children would be able to go on...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The Member has been in this Assembly 16 budgets, as have I, and we’ve talked since that time about taxes, resource royalty taxes, mining taxes, ways to raise revenue. We’ve tried hotel taxes and road tolls. We contemplated other taxes, as well, increases to the payroll tax. We’ve lived through the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression in the 1930s where we had to be very careful in terms of further negatively impacting the business community at a time when they were suffering significant loss.

The challenge for the 17th Assembly is going to be we are going...

As I indicated to the Member for Nahendeh, I will raise this issue not only with the deputy minister but I’ll be talking to the board chairs about the concern and who, in turn, can talk to the senior staff to deal with the issues and pass on the concern and ensure that every effort is made to provide all the services necessary and that we avoid these types of circumstances. But recognizing, as I said earlier, that over the course of any given day thousands of Northerners successfully go through the doors of health centres. We have to be concerned about those situations that the Member has...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. If I could refer the Member to clause 4, that lays out some of the processes that are going to be available to deal with and interact with the public, get public feedback to provide direction and feedback on performance. The topic of holding public meetings to review investment activities in the performance of the fund. The monitoring of the performance. There will be an opportunity through that process to have public input. Of course, there’s always the opportunity through MLAs and through committees as well.

The issue is not so much, in my opinion, the need for additional resources. It’s to try to fill the positions that are already there to avoid the circumstances, that the Member talked about in his statement, where there’s lack of services. The small communities tend to not get the services that they’re expecting on a regular basis, which is a gap that we try to avoid. Thank you.