Question.
The Member for Deh Cho. The Member for Sahtu. The Member for Range Lake. The Member for Inuvik Boot Lake. The Member for Monfwi. The Member for Frame Lake. The Member for Great Slave. The Member for Yellowknife North. The Member for Tu Nedhe-Wiilideh.
All those opposed, please stand. All those abstaining, please stand.
The Member for Thebacha. The Member for Yellowknife South. The Member for Kam Lake. The Member for Hay River North. The Member for Hay River South. The Member for Inuvik Twin Lakes. The Member for Nunakput.
Colleagues, all in favour, 9. Opposed, zero. Abstentions, 7. Motion has passed.
---Carried
Motions. Member from Yellowknife North.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker,
I MOVE, seconded by the honourable Member for Hay River North, that notwithstanding Rule 2.1, when the House adjourns on Thursday, June 13th, 2024, it shall be adjourned until Thursday, October 17th, 2024;
AND FURTHER, that any time prior to October 17th, 2024, if the Speaker is satisfied after consultation with the Executive Council and Members of the Legislative Assembly that the public interest requires that the House should meet at an earlier time during the adjournment, the Speaker may give notice and thereupon the House shall meet at the time stated in such notice and shall transact its business as it has been duly adjourned to that time.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Member from Yellowknife North. To the motion.
Question.
Question has been called. All those in favour? Opposed? Abstentions? Motion passed.
---Carried
Mr. Speaker, I wish to present to the House Bill 9, Supplementary Appropriation Act (Infrastructure Expenditures), No. 1, 2024-2025, to be read for the first time. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Minister. Pursuant to Rule 8.2(3), Bill 9 is deemed to have first reading and is ready for second reading.
First reading of bills. Minister of Finance.
Mr. Speaker, I wish to present to the House Bill 10, Appropriation Act (Operations Expenditures), 2024-2025, to be read for the first time. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Minister of Finance. Pursuant to rule 8.2(3), Bill 10 is deemed to have first reading as ready for second reading.
Mr. Speaker, I move, seconded by the honourable Member for Nunakput, that Bill 9, Supplementary Appropriation Act (Infrastructure Expenditures), No. 1, 2024-2025, be read for the second time.
This bill makes supplementary appropriations for infrastructure expenditures of the Government of the Northwest Territories for the 2024-2025 fiscal year. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Minister. The motion is in order. To the principle of the bill.
Question.
Question has been called. All those in favour? Opposed? Abstentions? The motion is carried. Bill 9 has been read for a second time.
---Carried
Second reading of bills. Minister of Finance.
-
Mr. Speaker, I move, seconded by the honourable Member for Nunakput, that Bill 10, Appropriation Act (Operations Expenditures), 2024-2025, be read for the second time.
This bill authorizes the Government of the Northwest Territories to make appropriations for operations expenditures for the 2024-2025 fiscal year. It also sets out limits on amounts that may be borrowed by the Commissioner on behalf of the government, includes information in respect of all existing borrowing and all projected borrowing for the fiscal year, and authorizes the making of disbursements to pay the principal of the amounts borrowed. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Minister. The motion is in order. To the principal of the bill.
Question.
Question has been called. All those in favour? Opposed? Abstentions? The motion is carried. Bill 10 has second reading.
---Carried
Mr. Speaker, I move, seconded by the honourable Member for Nunakput, that Bill 9, Supplementary Appropriation Act (Infrastructure Expenditures), No. 1, 2024-2025, be read for a third time. And, Mr. Speaker, I would request a recorded vote. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Minister. The motion is in order. To the bill.
Question.
The Member for Yellowknife South. The Member for Kam Lake. The Member for Hay River North. The Member for Hay River South. The Member for Inuvik Twin Lakes. The Member for Nunakput. The Member for Tu Nedhe-Wiilideh. The Member for Deh Cho. The Member for Sahtu. The Member for Range Lake. The Member for Inuvik Boot Lake. The Member for Monfwi. The Member for Frame Lake. The Member for Great Slave. The Member for Yellowknife North. The Member for Thebacha.
Sorry, folks. All those in favour, 16. Zero opposed. Zero abstentions. Motion has passed.
---Carried
Third reading of bills. Minister of Finance.
-
Mr. Speaker, I move, seconded by the honourable Member for Nunakput, that Bill 10, Appropriation Act (Operations Expenditures), 2024-2025, be read for the third time. And thank you, Mr. Speaker, I'd request a recorded vote.
Thank you, Minister. The motion is in order. To the motion. Member from Inuvik Boot Lake.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, to say it's been a bit of a grind these last couple of weeks I think is a bit of an understatement. Certainly, I know we've -- for those of us who it's our first time going through the budget process, certainly a learning experience and, yeah, and a long experience. Again, a big thanks to the staff that beared with us through this process.
I was going to say something cheeky about the Minister of Finance, but she works way too hard for me to do that. And I'm not going to lie, I'm a little bit scared of her as well so -- after the past three weeks.
Mr. Speaker, I'm going to be supporting this budget today and, listen, it's a balance. I know, you know, it's a balance when we come as Members from our constituents, we all have things we'd like to see in the budget, things that maybe we aren't so interested in the budget and, you know, we have to get through as a group. We understand that there's -- you know, we have some fiscal restraint that we need to look at for this government based on what's happened in previous governments, and I think we're heading in that right direction and I guess I commend everybody on that.
Having said that, of course, I'll continue as I have in this House, and I'm sure other Members will as well, to advocate for things that are in the budget, certainly partially, some things are in the budget wholeheartedly, but things that we'll continue to work towards. And, Mr. Speaker, I'll speak to a couple of those.
Certainly on our housing, housing is one of our major -- you know, one of our main priorities in this House. I know how passionate and certainly how hard working the Minister of housing is, and I know I'm going to see that transferred to her department as well. But what I will say is please spend the money, spend the money. We have units that need to be built. We have units that need to be repaired. We have people sitting and waiting for these units that have been promised these units, Mr. Speaker, and they're still waiting to get in them. So let's ensure to do whatever we have to do to get that money spent.
On addictions, Mr. Speaker, you've heard a lot of us speak on addictions here and what it's doing to our territory, what's happening in our communities with the drug trade, with the hard drugs that are in our communities. And, Mr. Speaker, I think that's going to take not only an investment in programs or an investment in infrastructure there when the time comes, we need places for people to go so when they come back into this territory after getting the significant treatment they need that they have a place to continue that treatment and not fall back into those situations that got them there in the first place, Mr. Speaker. So, again, and I know it's not only important to me, it's important to everybody on both sides of this House.
I'm happy, Mr. Speaker, with education and early learning and child care. I know, again, the Minister's very passionate on that issue, and I'm happy to see that we do have some additional funding in there to ensure that we're paying the people that look after the people that allow us to go to work every day and to make sure that we're able to attract professional people to work in our early learning centres and to give them the compensation that they deserve, they require, and to continue to do what they do. So that certainly makes me very happy. And I know speaking from members in my riding and the Children's First Society in my riding, it will be very welcomed news.
Economic growth, Mr. Speaker, you've heard me say in this House before, and I'll continue to speak about it, about, you know, thinking outside the box, I'm going to continue to advocate for our natural resources, I'm going to continue to advocate for natural gas in my region, and I'll continue to advocate for working with our Indigenous governments who are, again, leading the way on a lot of these -- certainly in my riding, leading the way on this initiative there. And I trust that we will continue to work with them and ensure that we are taking advantage of that as well.
It was spoken about passionately here today, with the Member certainly from the Sahtu -- he knows my opinion on this issue -- the Mackenzie Valley Highway is a must, Mr. Speaker. In my riding or in the Beaufort Delta, our trade route is through the Yukon. There's no doubt millions of dollars pour in through Yukon to Edmonton to Whitehorse. That is our trade route, Mr. Speaker, because that is our route to get there, and we need that highway. And I hear it regularly throughout my riding, our constituents, get that highway built. So I'm glad to hear the inspiring words that our Minister said today, as well as my colleagues, that, you know, we are going to get there, and we'll continue to push for that.
There's many other issues, Mr. Speaker, I could speak to. I got to tell you I'm a little low on gas, pardon the pun, after these last couple of weeks but I would like to say a huge thank you, obviously, to my colleagues, to our deputy chair of AOC, our Member from Deh Cho, and the work that AOC has done on this, to our amazing staff that have guided us through this work and stuck with us through thick and thin and, of course, to our Cabinet colleagues and specifically the Minister of Finance who's been nothing but professional and forthcoming and the Premier for stepping in when he had to and kicking some things across the goal line, which I certainly appreciated. And also the Minister of health, I know we had a little back and forth. But all of Cabinet, seriously, it's been a process. It's never easy. But I think we finally got there, something that I think we can be proud of. And I'll have some suggestions for the Minister of Finance on how we can maybe do this process a little differently next year, but we can talk about that at a later date. But, again, thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Member from Inuvik Boot Lake. To the motion. Member from Range Lake.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I want to start by thanking the honourable Members of this House and those in the public service and the Legislative Assembly who work to support us. This has been a demanding sitting. And without the attention of its Members and the diligence of our staff, we could not have accomplished our task of concluding the 2024 Budget. And I do want to give them a shout out as many members have today.
Mr. Speaker, compared to the last Speaker, my friend from Boot Lake, this will be a glass half empty speech to his glass half full, but I think it's important to contrast different expectations we may have in this House and also speak to our process of how we budget. I do want to thank the Minister of Finance for agreeing to partially fund the financial requests of the Standing Committee on Accountability and Oversight to the tune of $13,349,000. This includes reinstatements of the $2.58 million towards the community access program and the small community employment support funding; $3.5 million for early learning and child care funding; $500,000 for the Aurora College transformation project; and a commitment towards revenue neutral carbon pricing.
I want to, well, thank her in her speech yesterday for acknowledging that the standing committee, nor its membership, must align itself with the government's fiscal strategy; however, referencing this strategy in the same vein as committee's requests seems to imply that we are opposed to that strategy or more broadly we are promoting undisciplined spending during fiscal restraint. This is not the case. Many members on this side of the House have spoken for the need for restraint, including the last Speaker, especially around the growth of government jobs and unsustainable public sector growth. What Members have called for, rather, is an investment in priorities and a cohesive plan to develop spending to the areas as it's most needed, not to spending more money -- then not to spending more money when we don't have it. To be clear, the standing committee did not prescribe where the Minister needs to find the money, only that she spends it and perhaps alter other expenditures as a result. This government does not have a revenue problem. It has a spending problem. Revenue continues to grow year after year. That is not the Northwest Territories' problem. Our problem is how we spend those dollars.
Mr. Speaker, $13,349,000 in a $2.2 billion budget is not a modest sum of money. It is, at best, a rounding error worth less than a percentage point. For the countless hours that the standing committee and the House poured into Budget 2024, it's incredible to me that there's so much handwringing and negotiation that was required to get it. It's almost as if our system functions to corral our Members into fighting for table scraps as the machinery of government chugs along, undaunted by the supposed minority position of Cabinet. We have all been ground down by this process, long days and nights eroding any sense of priority other than get us out of here. We should be fighting for our constituents, not against our own exhaustion. After 23 hours and 26 minutes, we can do far better than this outcome and far, far better than this process.
Mr. Speaker, $13 million and change has not saved the midwifery program. It has not rolled back the changes to extended health benefits that will drive up costs for many of my constituents. And it has resulted in a little more than a stay of execution for the Fort Smith correctional centre. We heard loud and clear that these things are important to everyday Northerners, working hard to stay ahead of a world that is getting more expensive, less predictable, and far more dangerous. Likewise, we missed an opportunity to phase out private agency nursing by 2027, to stop the slow moving privatization of our health care system, a move that would have cost nothing and done so much to improve staff morale and send a clear message that we value our health care professionals and will do anything to make our system work better for them instead of rely on an expensive band-aid solution.
Mr. Speaker, there is much I continue to support in this budget. Expanded and enhanced policing, economic initiatives around film, fisheries, and mining, health care investments, and more planning towards transformative infrastructure projects like Taltson Hydro, the Slave Geological Province Road, and Mackenzie Valley Highway. These initiatives are more -- these initiatives and more are contained in this budget and are critical to the future of the Northwest Territories and to Range Lake as they align with the promises I made to my voters; promises I intend to keep.
So I will be voting to support this budget, but I will also continue to hold accountable the government for the commitments they've made to address the concerns we brought forward both at committee and in this House, particularly the promises made to midwives, health care professionals, correctional officers, and to the community of Fort Smith. I look forward to moving forward and this government to start making progress towards achieving its mandate and realizing the promises of all of our political priorities. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Member from Range Lake. To the motion. Member from Great Slave.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I do not have a fancy speech; I have bullet points so bear with me. I think overall, generally speaking, it's a sign of a good negotiation when both sides come away somewhat unsatisfied. I also want to thank the AOC chair and AOC deputy chair. These two folks have done a fantastic job for the folks that are here on this side of the House. Much gratitude to you both.
The conversations that I will continue to have with this Cabinet focus on four main areas. The first, after listening to my colleague from Yellowknife North, is the Office of the Children's Lawyer. When we have folks in legal aid pleading with us not to cut that office, I think we should listen to them. The second is midwifery. The conversations that folks on this side of the House, and I think most of the Members on this side of the House and some on Cabinet have had with the folks in midwifery in the NWT, have pointed to the lack of a system that truly supports making midwifery a strong reality in our territory. I think the benefit and path forward from these conversations that I see as a positive, and up to those conversations that I was having as late as today, Mr. Speaker, was that there is a door open for those conversations to continue, and I think the relationship is one that can continue to build, and I look forward to working helping to build that wherever I can. When it comes to extended health benefits, I want to thank Cabinet for increasing the threshold as I campaigned on the absolute dire straits that many people in my riding find themselves in with the cost of living. Any time we're asking people who are ill or disabled to have even more hardship is something we need to take a closer look at. I am confident the Minister of health is going to look at that very carefully in the rollout of this program.
And, finally, when it comes to the fact that we are in fiscal restraint, Mr. Speaker, and that very much means that the writing might be on the wall for the -- how do I put this -- one of the options available in the tool kit of this government is reductions in the public service, Mr. Speaker. And while I recognize that might be an attractive tool to save money, I would really encourage specifically the Minister of Finance, who is responsible for the public service, to heed the mandate letter that she just received today from the Premier. And that reads: The GNWT has an amazing workforce, one which continuously strives to provide services and programs to the best of their ability to residents. As Ministers, we must provide public servants with the guidance and tools necessary for them to work with us in our commitment to serving the people of the NWT.
So some of those tools should be how -- if their jobs are no longer necessary, how they can be trained up for other jobs in the public service, Mr. Speaker, and how we can support them to transition and give them lots of time to contemplate how that might look. So I will continue to press on that, Mr. Speaker.
One of my colleagues here in the House used the word in this session that I really, really like, and that word is heartful. Being heartful and vulnerable are assets in a consensus government, not liabilities. It's been very apparent to me that the more that you spend time speaking from your heart in this building, the more people will hear you and the more concessions on both sides can happen. Listening in a heart forward way I think is the way that the majority of us do our work here every day since November, and I hope that that can continue and that we can continue to have hard discussions and good conversations and make good choices for the residents of the NWT. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
To the motion. Member from the Sahtu.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I rise in support of the budget here. We've started off the initiative towards the fiscal sustainability strategy back in February, and now we're at the end, and it never turns out in the interest of what we all expect, but I think we can all realize that there is passion in this Chamber. I feel confident in this leadership in moving on. Yes, we got to give today for tomorrow. And that compromise is what I'm going to be telling the community of Deline and in collaboration and working together and moving forward is exactly what I expect to receive. I've got to attend a graduation in Colville Lake here next week. It's the same day as the Deline school. Deline is larger than Coville, but in the spirit of collaboration, I know I will get support for not attending Deline by the elders there saying thank you for going where the priority is. Colville Lake, they're far behind in their school infrastructure and given the need, I do expect and I know I will get respect on collaboration by the community of Deline in saying thank you for going to Coville rather than we would like you to be here but in standing and supporting our Sahtu communities, I agree with you why you picked Coville over my community. So on that note, I see that philosophy here with this budget. And I see the passion in leadership on moving ahead. People are waiting for this budget. Some people are phoning me from back home and saying when are we going to go to work because we got to depend on the municipal carve out for our communities. Okay, just wait. Now we can all go back to work on summer projects, and I'm glad to hear that the smaller community funds are reinstated. I think we put a lot of smiles on people's faces in the smaller communities, in particular the ones that I represent that are facing hardships. And I look forward to joining them in discussing some of the solutions that the Ministers of Finance, Infrastructure, and ITI has shown their support for designing a relief package for the impacted members due to the cancellation of the barge. So I look forward to working with what we got. And I hope everybody has an enjoyable summer. Mahsi.
Thank you, Member from the Sahtu. To the motion. Member from Monfwi.
Mr. Speaker, thank you. Mr. Speaker, I realize that the GNWT is more than $1 billion in debt, and we are at 96 percent of the debt limit. Yes, we are in fiscal restraint, and I commend the Cabinet for its effort to meet the needs of the people. The Cabinet has done its best to work with the people and especially our colleagues on this side too. I know not everyone is going to agree, but the Cabinet Ministers listen and work with us. That is a good thing. Not only that, but some of us Regular MLAs make budget requests and feel that our requests and proposals were listened to by the government. We are glad to see the government working with Indigenous governments as well in creating bilateral agreements.
I am thankful under Premier Simpson's leadership there is a good working relationship with Indigenous governments such as Tlicho government. And as noted before and as an example, we see their working relationship, you know, working with the Tlicho government trying to create the Tlicho administrative region, and Housing NWT is working with Tlicho government to possibly transfer 14 market rental units as noted, transitional addiction recovery program, and other programs that will help community members suffering with addictions and mental health.
Mr. Speaker, for the first time we will have a midwife position in Behchoko. Hopefully that will make a difference for young parents. Although, Mr. Speaker, I would like to acknowledge and recognize our ancestors who were -- many of them were midwife and delivered a lot of babies with no pay. I would like to recognize them as I am speaking here.
Mr. Speaker, I know we cannot close the municipal funding gap with this budget though. Although I am confident that in the future we can identify areas of saving which can then be redirected to close the municipal funding gap more effectively. One of MACA's goal is to help create and maintain healthy communities. Healthy communities lead to healthy people. It is an exercise in prevention.
Mr. Speaker, if we cut funds for communities, we are creating pressure to displace people from the communities and have them migrate to Yellowknife or to other larger regional centre. When you talk to certain people in Yellowknife on the street, many times you will find they are from the communities -- from a community. Their needs were not met in the communities, in their small communities, and now the cost for their care in Yellowknife is dramatically increasing.
With that in mind, Mr. Speaker, the funds allocated to small communities for capital operation and maintenance is not enough, and small communities are suffering and struggling. In the future, the government will have to take more time to work with us on this. I will support this budget but look forward to working with the Cabinet Minister to make appropriate changes reflecting the needs of the small community.
Mr. Speaker, I want to thank everyone here, our colleagues, and staff for helping and working with us as these past two weeks have been hard on all of us. It was a stressful time for us. And when we return in fall, there's going to be one research staff that is not going to be here, so and she is moving on to something better. And I wish her well, and I know we will miss her. And I want to wish everybody to have a good, safe summer. Thank you.
To the motion. Member from Tu Nedhe-Wiilideh.
