Debates of February 11, 2013 (day 4)

Okay, committee, I’d like to call us back to order, please. We have agreed to consider Tabled Document 9-17(4), Main Estimates, 2013-2014. We’ve also agreed to begin with general comments. I would like to ask the Minister of Finance if he would like to bring witnesses into the House.

Yes, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Minister Miltenberger. Does committee agree?

Agreed.

Agreed, thank you. I’ll ask the Sergeant-at-Arms if he would please escort the witnesses to the table.

Minister Miltenberger, for the record, could you please introduce your witnesses.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I have with me Mike Aumond, deputy minister of Finance; and Sandy Kalgutkar, deputy secretary to FMB. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. So, each Member can speak initially for 10 minutes on general comments. General comments. Mr. Dolynny.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I do have some opening comments here. I’m going to limit my comments more around one part of the budget and allow my opportunity to be more detailed as we get more in depth by department.

The concern I have is that we’ve seen our social umbrella expand to greater deficits, and when you look at past budgets and even this budget, there is no economic balance that we see for the Territories moving forward.

In 2011-2012 we spent roughly $360 million in health and that constituted about 26.4 percent of our overall budget then. As we progressed over the years, we are currently, according to the main estimates here, at $363 million and change, at 24.8 percent of our overall budget. So we’ve taken, basically, an erosion as a total means of our expenditure in Health, which really, when you look at it, has to beg some questions. Again, our social umbrella requires continued investment, we have got forced growth, we’ve got a whole flurry of initiatives that have been identified by this side of the House and in Social Programs committee, and again, the concern we have is where are we going.

To top that off, if you look at out of the $363 million that we have in Health, about $100 million or so of that is medical travel. So when you really analyze how much money we’re spending on health, true health – and I’m not talking about transportation from facility to facility – we’re only spending about 17.9 percent of our budget in what I consider true health.

When you look at the economics of scale, when you look at what’s happening across Canada, most provincial jurisdictions, according to the last reports, are spending well in excess of 42 percent, or .42 dollars of their budget dollars on health. Most experts and economists believe that with the continued pressures on health and, as you mentioned in your statement earlier today, people are living longer and putting more pressures on the system. The anticipation is that budgets across Canada, provincial budgets, will have to exceed over .50 dollars, or 50 percent, of their budget on health.

So it’s clear in this day and age that although the Minister has come forward and has provided a tight budget, or a budget of restraint, health, and a question in my mind, is one of those areas that we cannot restrain. We’ve got to keep up with demand; we’ve got to keep up with forced growth; and we’ve got to keep up with that social umbrella that our people in the Northwest Territories are dependent on.

I think we’ll probably find out more in the details segment when we get to the Department of Health, the fact that we’ve got to look at some key areas to keep up with those expenditures, and those areas will be definitely in prevention and promotion, and we believe that the chronic disease management is definitely suffering, and a proper management model was not mentioned, per se, in this budget.

I think the people will look to this government to create some framework around specialized wellness, of course, and mental health and addictions. What we’ve got before us and what has been presented is more of a piecemeal approach, and we were hoping that the 2013-2014 budget would have had more adequacies to achieve what I considered our Assembly’s goals and mission. I think the NWT residents expect us to deliver on these most important priorities in the specialized wellness.

I think, more importantly, in concluding my area in Health and Social Services, there has been some degree of investment in this budget with respect to midwifery. You know the studies have been done. There has been some very serious and solid recommendations made, and I think the time has now come for our children to be born in their homes and in their communities. I believe that the amount of money that has been put aside is really a good gesture, but really by no sense or any means an era that we’re going to see midwifery in this term, or at least in this fiscal budget term, which is unfortunate.

Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. Mr. Miltenberger.

Thank you, Madam Chair. The Member raises a concern that we should be putting more money into social programs, specifically health and social services. When I was Health Minister for five and a half years, I made the comment repeatedly that if you doubled the budget of health care, we’d be back within a year or a year and a half saying we need more to do all things for all people. I don’t think, looking to the fact that other jurisdictions are spending 40 to 45 percent of every dollar on health care, not social services, not housing, not anything else, is a sign of success. The reality is, every jurisdiction will tell you that they’re on the fast track to bankruptcy. The sign of spending that kind of money, untrammelled, uncontrolled health care costs, is not affordable. That’s a practical reality.

I think we should take considerable comfort in the fact that we have a combined system, not just health care as a stovepipe, but when you link all the social programs we provide, we provide a selection of services that I have always said are, in my opinion, without equal in any other jurisdiction. You talk about the $180-some million we put in subsidy programs, our medical travel, our support for seniors, our no rent or modest rent for seniors over 60, we have an array. If this Legislature decides that they want to, in fact, spend 40 cents of every dollar on health care, and at the same time agree that we’re not going to raise taxes, and at the same time agree that we want to do all these other things, then we best gather around the table and sort that particular direction out, because we’ve been managing ourselves very, very carefully to stay fiscally balanced to make sure we have all those services there and at the same time do the investments in infrastructure and do all the other things that are critical to our territory.

I would suggest that when you look at the whole package that we put forward as a Legislature as a budget, that a lot of the issues that are not directly health related are tied to health care. The quality of life in the communities, the housing, the water, the roads, the ability to get a job, all those things are tied, in the long run, to health care.

I appreciate the Member’s concern, but I would strongly speak against looking to those poor jurisdictions that are paying that kind of money on every dollar to try to deliver health care costs, when they will stand up and all say that if we keep on this path we will be bankrupt.

I appreciate the Minister’s reply and his concern about deficit spending and potential bankruptcy in other jurisdictions. I would, though, like to make mention that budgets invoke change in policy. Budgets provide ladders of opportunity. I believe that we have a huge amount of opportunity that is still not being tapped into in the Territories. We have crumbling infrastructure. We’ve got maximum capacity. In fact, we’ve got overcapacity subscribed. If we pick our Stanton Territorial Hospital, for example, this hospital was designed for 10,000 visits per year. We know this hospital is now at 20,000 visits per year. They are working out of closets. In fact, they don’t even have room for closets anymore because they’ve been used for all different sorts of service oriented work.

I’m concerned. We’ve got no nurses in the communities. We’ve heard that time and time again here in this House. We’ve got concerns with long-term care facilities, long-term care beds as our aging population is bestowed upon us. We’ve got issues with home care. Again, keeping people in our homes as long as we can, especially in our small communities. I’m really concerned that as much as we want to look at fiscally tightening and battening down the hatches and controlling the economic levers for our success, our spending on health care has not kept up with the times and has not kept up with the demands of the Northwest Territories. The residents demand more. I think the residents need to hear a future in health care spending. I’m not saying 42 cents of every dollar needs to be the magic number but, believe me, the current flow of 24.8 cents of our dollar being spent in this budget does not equate or fit the means of what we’re seeing provincially, and I think there’s a huge opportunity going forward.

We agree that we have infrastructure challenges, which is why we have taken the planning steps that we have in terms of two years of fiscal discipline so we can, in fact, put more money into infrastructure. We have a $3 billion infrastructure deficit. We’ve identified and we’re starting to put some very serious money into Stanton and we’ve acknowledged that it needs a midlife retrofit. It was built at a time when the population was a lot lower. That’s going to be a $200 million to $300 million project and we’re on the road to taking care of that. We’re building long-term care facilities. In this budget, we’ve put in millions to better staff some of the existing facilities in Smith, Simpson, I believe, and Yellowknife. We recognize that as well.

Once again, I don’t think we should use the amount of money we spend as the clear comparator. That we’re going to compare ourselves, okay, it’s not 42 but it should be 30.

I say again that I think we have a level of services in this territory that are without equal in this country. We have to compare what you are getting for the money we spend. When you combine all the things we put money into to assist people, I think that’s the test we have to look at. It’s too simplistic to say Ontario spends this much on health care, we have to spend something like that or, for some reason, we’re not doing enough even though we have the best seniors benefits in the country, we have some of the best student financial assistance in the country, the best pharmacare, the best medical travel, we have midwifery as an insured service that is going to grow now to other parts of the territory. Most other jurisdictions don’t even have that as a service. I think we have to be very careful how we move on this. We can do this if that’s the will of this Legislature, but we have to be prepared to make those trade-offs as we do that.

We do have nurses. One of the challenges is to get all the grads to want to work someplace other than Yellowknife, and come up with a training program that allows new grads to be given another component to allow them to be able to go into a community as a nurse in charge.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Next on the list for general comments I have Mr. Bromley.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I find myself well aligned with Mr. Dolynny’s comments. The Minister says we’ve been fiscally responsible. I’m going on my sixth year and it seems like every year we find ourselves more in debt despite increasing the debt and taking into account the redefinition of debt. We’ve made some really unfathomable decisions on big, costly infrastructure projects that really don’t have an economic return. We seem bent on continuing that sort of bizarre decision-making.

I’m just going to go through the budget address by way of helping to focus my comments, if that’s helpful at all for people who might want to follow me.

I note the mineral exploration grew 44 percent in 2012. I frequently hear that’s not happening. In fact, it’s grown now over a four-year period. Despite the Minister’s portrayal of austerity and so on, and many of the economic indices as being negative, in fact, they are positive in many cases. Just a comment.

I am a bit perplexed that, given the absence in our growth in our human population and the increase in our revenues, that’s portrayed in a very negative way. I would say people around the world would be very happy if they had the same number of people and revenues were increasing. I guess it’s that slavish commitment to growth is the only way to be healthy.

Again, the Minister has portrayed austerity for the people and luxury for big enterprise that likes to build roads and bridges. I can’t agree with that and I don’t think that’s the sort of things we want closing down services to our people and so on, or failing to provide the necessary services while we spend money on these big non-economic pieces of infrastructure. The statement in line with that, we will not use revenues from non-renewable resources to fund government programs and services is, to me, just a further commitment of luxury treatment for big industry and austerity for our people. We know, and will be talking about all the services that are… In fact what the Minister is referring to here is roads and bridges. We have so much infrastructure which has just been discussed, building infrastructure that needs attention and is part and parcel of our services. I do not support that.

The $1.15 million, I was happy to see that in A Shared Path Towards Wellness: A Mental Health and Addictions Action Plan and I’d like to hear more that explains exactly how that will address the Justice’s concerns about what mental health services are needed before they can support a mental health court, which I believe this government is committed to and recognizes the need for.

Concern regarding effective spending of early childhood dollars, I have expressed, already, concerns about that. We approved dollars a year ago and, apparently, at least some of them were not spent until very recently. This means inefficient spending when we try and spend a whole year’s budget in the last few weeks of the fiscal year. That may be more pervasive than just early childhood.

Midwifery, glad to see some money there. I think it’s not sufficient and it’s not focused at putting programs on the ground, so I know we’re going to be having more discussion on that.

I appreciate the recognition of service needs for our seniors and the growing proportion of people who are seniors in our population. In fact, we do need both staffing of facilities and more infrastructure there.

I was very pleased to see the commitment come forward with supplementary appropriation to meet the requirements to implement an Anti-Poverty Strategy if and when we get there. I’m anticipating that will be fairly soon.

The Minister noted an investment of $1.2 million to help Northerners capture the benefits of Sahtu oil and gas exploration. This is the first in a long list, and I’ll tell you how far we’re going to stretch this $1.2 million. We’re going to capture the benefits. We’re going to mitigate the associated impacts. We’re going to fund career development. We’re going to fund training programs. We’re going to support local businesses. Still with the same $1.2 million. We’re also going to fund the collection of additional environmental baseline data for groundwater, surface water, and wildlife and environmental assessments and permitting, and increase resources for monitoring oil and gas activities. That’s not the end of the list for this $1.2 million. We’re also going to provide for additional RCMP resources. The Victim Services Programs. Again, my point is, recognizing what is happening in the Sahtu, the $1.2 million will hardly be noticeable. What else are we going to do to meet that need? Where are the federal dollars? What are we doing to bring those in?

We do need to commit to mitigating the high cost of energy but I’d sooner reduce the high cost of energy. I note we are subsidizing again fossil fuel energy, $9.4 million just in this one fund alone for electricity rates. It’s less than last year, at least. I think that was $17 million. My point has always been that we should take the reduction from year to year over the next few years, and put those into energy infrastructures and programs that actually reduce the cost of living. I still don’t see that happening.

An extra $523,000 to support transboundary water negotiations. Again, we have sailed the amount dedicated to this every year for the last several years. We are now over millions of dollars. I’m just wondering when we’re going to stop, especially given that we don’t have any authority in this area. Recognizing, at the same time, that there is good work happening here. I think the Minister talks about living within our means and I think that’s one area where we’re rapidly approaching if not have surpassed our means.

Very happy to see the $700,000 for energy-efficient wood pellet boilers in public housing units, although I note that is included in the energy initiatives, and in fact this means that other programs are being put into that and actual energy initiatives are declining.

I mean, just looking at diamonds alone, $2 billion worth non-renewable resources shipped out of the Northwest Territories. That’s greater than our annual budget by far. I’m assuming that we should be able to make a donation to the Heritage Fund for future generations. So I will look forward to that. I haven’t been able to look at the budget to see whether that’s there, so I would appreciate knowing how much we will be contributing this year. Given the $2 billion and other resources, it obviously should be significant.

Finally, I see in the conclusion the Minister mentioned early childhood development again. I appreciate that mention. I think that is recognized as a real priority of the 16th and 17th Assemblies. I’m looking forward to an early childhood framework coming forward and identifying dollars that we need to put into that and going for those through our supplementary appropriation.

My last comment on the Inuvik-Tuk highway is amazingly profiled here as a “critical, major infrastructure.” I don’t know how this could possibly be portrayed with the words “critical, major infrastructure.” There is no business case for this road. It is clearly a politically motivated project. It is the farthest thing from critical. We heard some discussion of infrastructure that actually is critical, such as our medical infrastructure and our highway system, existing highway system, that is falling apart. We are unable to entertain maintenance of it given our continual redirection of dollars into new projects.

That’s all the general comments I have. I look forward to any response.

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Minister Miltenberger.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I appreciate the Member’s comments and his ongoing attention to content and detail.

With regard to being more in debt, I would just point out once again, if you put us on a national comparative scale, we are one of the best managed and best run jurisdictions in the country with our debt to GDP ratio and the amount of interest to revenue that we are paying to service our debt. Most of our debt is self-liquidating.

We actually have about $150-some million or $180 million of actual debt that’s not, at this point, self-liquidating. We made a conscious point during extremely challenging economic times to invest money, to do some very strategic borrowing to, in fact, protect programs and services, not lay people off and still put money into infrastructure, and we’ve done all that. So we’re not just going out of control here. We have very carefully managed debt. I would suggest, as well, that big project that the Member says has no value, I think that the bridge is a legacy piece of infrastructure that is already showing its value. I think the $200 million to $300 million we spend on a big project like Stanton is going to be critical money that should be, and needs to be, spent and will be spent.

It is easy for us to say, in this part of the country where there are roads and bridges and paving everywhere, that a road that opens up a part of the Far North, a critical part of our territory, has no value and it’s not critical and it’s not important. I would suggest to you that if we look at the big picture, that is a big project. It is part of the Northern Strategy of the federal government. It feeds into the value of the North, and roads, in my opinion, as Prime Minister Diefenbaker pointed out, are always good investments. And we’re not closing services down. In fact, we’re expanding services as you look around us with early childhood, midwifery, all those program areas, we are continuing to expand services. If there is a strong exception to the fact that we say it would be fool hardy to put highly volatile resource dollars into running base programs and services, then we should have that political debate and we should look at other jurisdictions. Let’s look at Norway and all that resource money. Not only did they not put it into programs and services, they took it completely offshore. In fact, they haven’t allowed any of that resource money into that economy and they’ve developed a very strong, vibrant, sustainable economy.

If you look at the trouble that Alberta’s having this very day and age, as we sit here talking, with their shortfalls because they put all that money into programs and services, they’ve used it to run their day-to-day operations. When the price fluctuates down, they are $6 billion short. They are paying a premium. They are losing on every barrel of oil, but unlike Norway, which has a $600 billion plus Heritage Fund, Alberta is $18 million after all the years of the oil boom that they've had and the money they’ve had. So if you want to have that discussion, we should have that about what’s the best way to do this. Should we grow the base? Should we aim to 40 cents on every dollar because that’s what other jurisdictions that are carrying enormous deficits have put money into those program areas and somehow that would make us a better run jurisdiction? We should have that discussion.

We’ve picked, as an Assembly, a track that is worth staying on and I think we have to work hard to stay on that track. We are $50 million more next year into the capital. Devolution is coming and some of those resource royalties will be flowing to us. The red flag projects will be back on the list. We are going to expand midwifery. We are going to do a lot of other things.

For the record, Madam Chair, I will point out, as well, last year the Legislature agreed to put $250,000 to the Heritage Fund. That was to the base. So there is another $250,000 into the Heritage Fund again this year, and it will stay in the base until that figure gets changed through the budget process. We are stretching the money we have in the Sahtu as far as we can. There is also money that’s going to come to us through this Environmental Research Fund that’s going to allow us to supplement that money as we work on groundwater, surface water and wildlife work.

Madam Chair, I appreciate the Member’s comments. I think overall we have a good budget, and we look forward to the discussion with the Member and others as we go forward. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. I am going to use the Chair’s prerogative to allow Mr. Bromley a very, very short, I don’t know what it is, rebuttal/comment. Mr. Bromley.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Just a very brief comment. If the Minister proposes to put non-renewable resource revenue into the Heritage Fund, I would support that. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. I will take that as a comment. Next on my list is Mr. Blake.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Just reflecting on what I said last year, I was very concerned that they weren’t putting money into our economy. That’s something I am very concerned with. Although we are doing well here in the southern part of our territory, up in the northern part, the Mackenzie Delta, we are struggling. There isn’t very much for economic projects up there right now. I am very glad we are putting some funds forward to meet our priorities; for example, the fibre optic link. As I mentioned last time, we did put money towards the Inuvik-Tuk highway and I’m glad to see that in the budget this year.

It’s very good to see that things have picked up in the Sahtu region. Our employment rates right now are roughly at 68 percent, but we could make it better once we begin our economic projects in the territory.

A good example my colleagues brought up here last week were the prices in Yellowknife. They are very concerned that they are paying $1.38 per litre of gas, but yet in the Mackenzie Delta, where there is not very much for economics, we are paying $1.80. Yet there seems to be no problem with that.

Madam Chair, I really appreciate that we’re putting $250,000 to focus on youth. There are a lot of projects that are being taken in the communities right now. A lot of these communities, like the smaller communities, don’t have youth facilities or youth centres that youth can gather, just communicate and keep busy. That way they’re not led astray.

Also, I appreciate that we are investing in long-term facilities here in the southern part of the region. Even though the territory, a good example about a month back is here in town. There was somebody in the mall there that was speaking about health care in the territory. They are really impressed the way we take care of our elders here in the territory. That is our tradition. We need to expand what we are doing right now. Right now we are basically focusing on regional centres, but we talk about decentralization. Well, let’s look at the larger centres, larger communities, not only the regional centres. I think that’s something this government could do in the future.

I also appreciate that we are putting funds towards the fibre optic link. I am really excited to see these projects progress further.

And also tourism. We did get an increase in tourism. We can always do a lot more. We have a lot of opportunity here in the Northwest Territories for tourism. Although we are putting a lot into marketing, we need to work with the small businesses to create a lot more businesses, especially in tourism, whether it’s boat tours. It doesn’t have to be big game hunting, although big game hunting is doing well. There are all different types that we can do.

Also, with the Deh Cho Bridge, I hope there are a lot more tourism initiatives with that as a highlight.

With that, that’s all I have right now, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Blake. Minister Miltenberger.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I appreciate the Member’s comments. As we get into the detail with those program areas that I know the Member has referenced on-the-land programs and some of the other work that has to be done, we will be able to have those discussions when the Ministers come to the table.

I appreciate his support for the Mackenzie Valley fibre optic line as well as, of course, the work that we are trying to do on the Inuvik-Tuk highway. Part of our commitment to try to spread the wealth around the Northwest Territories as much as possible, and these are, I think, in the long run, very positive projects. I thank the Member for his comments. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Next I have Mr. Moses.

Thank you, Madam Chair. There are some good comments on the floor this afternoon. As a new Member, 16 months into the Assembly and going through our first budget process, and everything was thrown at us as a new Member, it was a really big learning curve. I feel that over the 16 months, working with the committees that I’ve had the opportunity to work with, working with governments and also taking a good stance with specifically our Social Programs committee and all the work we’ve been doing and working with other NGOs and other service providers in the Northwest Territories and being able to work and trying to get some of these initiatives and some of the program dollars that they need to run the programs successfully or more efficiently, I think has been pretty successful.

Going back to this specific budget, back in September we had a lot of really good discussion in the committee rooms to get to where we are today, and proving these department by department over the next five weeks. I do share comments made by some other colleagues in terms of where we had expressed some interest to try to get more dollars for better programs and services for people of the Northwest Territories.

I was excited to come into the budget session for these six weeks. Although we did get some things addressed, we felt that in some areas the dollars could have been spent more efficiently and could have been spent in areas of better programs and services, but also getting a few more dollars to make sure that the dollars that we are spending this year are going to be effective in the regions, specifically the Midwifery Program. We are going to be going to a consultant, possibly for the territory. I feel that we do have the reports, we do have the information out there, that we need to hit the ground running, and start providing these services to these expecting families and mothers in the communities so that they can stay at home, have healthy pregnancies without the undue stress of having to be away from home and away from their family, friends and loved ones over the amount of years. There was a midwifery report that gave a lot of recommendations. We based our discussions around that midwifery report and made our recommendations to government. What we saw out of that I guess it was a little unsatisfactory on some of our parts.

Another area that we really wanted to focus on and we had a really good presentation from NWT Tourism. They did an excellent job in Ottawa during NWT days. They did a great job with the marketing strategy with the amount of dollars that they do have right now, which is very minimal. I believe it is the second lowest budget in all of Canada. In fact, they are competing with other jurisdictions for marketing time and space on TV for programs that are here in the Northwest Territories.

I feel that we need to support our tourism industry so that we can start getting a return on investment for dollars that are put out there. Not only that, this group does an excellent job. They have a great expanded marketing program, a lot of very good measurable outcomes, goals and objectives. It is written on paper already and it is actually on the ITI website as one of their, I think it was their 2012-13 budget, and here we are in ‘13-14 still fighting for dollars for them. It is good to see the $600,000 increase that was mentioned earlier in the budget address and the ongoing $1.2 million here afterwards. I feel the sooner we get them into expanded marketing, into expanded markets, we’re going to see a benefit to the Northwest Territories and to small business and other groups in the NWT that do business up here in the Northwest Territories.

Just from the reports that we have seen, it is going to create a lot of jobs in Inuvik, Tuktoyaktuk and that whole region for the next four years. If you recall, I think in June or whenever we went through the last business plans, you can see it in the main estimates, and that’s an increase in the income support that we critically see right now in the Beaufort-Delta. We don’t have a lot of economic stability and a lot of economic development going on in the region, so that there’s going to be a continued increase into the income support that we’re providing to our families, as well as looking at other areas of rental subsidies for people that aren’t in the workforce and need government to look into that. In fact, I’ve see it in my office. I’ve had people come who have had jobs their whole lives and find themselves on tough times, and are actually going in to get their rent paid for them, as well as going on income support, and it’s a hard pill to swallow for them to take that route when they’ve worked their whole lives. So when we work in our regions and our ridings and we see this on a daily basis, it’s hard to look at the debates that we are going to have, but at the same time we’ve got to understand that when we make decisions territorially that it’s not only for our region. Even though we do represent our regions, we’ve got to look at what’s the best interest for all people of the Northwest Territories, and the Inuvik-Tuk highway is one project that’s going to assist with that.

As well as the fibre optic link. It’s going to be an opportunity to collect data from our region and all of the world that other groups are going to want to come and participate in and buy that data, as well as create a fibre optic link down the Mackenzie Valley. It’s going to create better infrastructure for all these communities down the valley, to better education, better health and social services. I’m glad to see that on there, because the sooner we start investing in these kinds of projects, the sooner our people will start to benefit. Just like what we did with the early childhood development funding that we got last year when we had to take a big stance on this side of the House and defer a certain budget to make sure that we got that in there. It’s this government working as a consensus government to say that we do care about our people and we do want to invest in them.

There was a lot of other really good things that I really did see in the budget address that we’re going to see over these main estimates over the next five weeks. Obviously, early childhood development, and a big push always on the mental health and addictions, and that’s another area of where we saw that we could take a big stance. It is our biggest cost-driver in the Department of Health and Social Services. If you combine it with the Department of Justice and the health system, you just need to see where we can start focusing those dollars to better serve our people that are battling those types of addictions.

Another big item that was addressed was the energy initiatives to look into liquid natural gas for Inuvik and finding solutions. Obviously, that’s been a big concern, and there was something in the newspaper today about the fuel that’s being provided right now, the synthetic gas and the energy costs in Inuvik specifically. It’s going to be hard not only on our residents but our business, our small business, and I’m glad to see that there are some dollars in there. I would like to see a little bit more, to see how we can find solutions so that it does decrease the cost of living for people that I represent in Inuvik, and finding solutions that not only will work for Inuvik, but can be also a building block and a roadmap for other communities that might be going through the same problem, such as Norman Wells.

Although we didn’t get everything that we had asked for during our budget dialogue, I commend the Minister for taking the budget out on the road. In that sense, I just want to see what type of a commitment the Minister made. He did mention that some of what he heard was in line with some of the priorities of the 17th Legislative Assembly. I want to see the impact that our people in the communities actually had on this budget as we move forward. I’ll be sure to make good connections with not only the leaders in Inuvik and the Beaufort-Delta region but my constituency and my riding in the community of Inuvik to see what was said, and work with the budget report as well as the main estimates as we go through them. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you very much, Mr. Moses. Minister Miltenberger.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I thank the Member for his comments. This budget-making is an issue and it’s a process of making choices, of looking at a long list of demands with a finite amount of resources, and we’ve done that again this year. We’ve been on this budget now for about six months collectively, and we’ve tried to capture as much as we can with the funds that are available, and we’re here to have the discussion now about the pieces, the final pieces maybe that need work or that possibly need adjusting.

I appreciate the Member’s comments about the support for the projects. The liquid natural gas in Inuvik, there is work being done and we are hoping to be able to show some success here in the next number of weeks if all pans out, which we’d be coming to the committee with as we do the work, and work that has potential not only for Inuvik, once we get it up and running, but if in fact it proves out it will be a benefit to other thermal communities as well. So we’re hard at work on that one.

We will look forward to the discussion once again on things like the midwifery and all the other program areas where there are concerns being raised, keeping in mind the agreements we have to manage our fiscal realities, so that next year we’ll start with an additional $50 million into capital. When we are successful with devolution, we’ll also be reworking as we meet with the Members to discuss the impact that will have on our operations as well. But in the meantime, this budget is based on the money we have on the table and I look forward to the discussion with Members as we carry on here over the next five weeks. Thank you.

Thank you. Next I have for general comments, Mr. Bouchard.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I think most of the information or concerns that I have will come out in the details of each department, but I think my biggest concerns today that I’d like to express is the continuing increasing size of our budget. Our expenditures continue to get larger and larger, even though the Minister and the Cabinet keep indicating to us that we’re on fiscal restraint and we want to keep our expenditures down as much as possible, but we continue to grow the size of our budget every year. Phenomenal numbers for the population of 43,000 people.

I think one of the biggest concerns that I see in the budget is the creation of an additional 56 new positions in the GNWT. We’re hitting over 5,000 employees. Those are phenomenal numbers, I think. They’re huge numbers. We’re obviously the main employer in the Northwest Territories. That doesn’t include numbers of NGOs and associations that the government funds. So how much of our economy is basically driven on the back of the GNWT. Our budget is astronomic.

Along the lines of those employment numbers, one of the priorities in this Assembly is to do decentralization. Granted, I’m appreciative of the fact that my community is seeing some of that decentralization, but when you look at the numbers, a creation of 56 new jobs continues to be anywhere from 25 to 26 positions of those are created in Yellowknife. So I mean, we’re still keeping 50 percent to the capital and 50 percent to the other regions spread out throughout the Territories. The department and the budget indicated 18 decentralization positions. Well, that’s not a very big number. When you say in one budget they’re creating 56 new jobs, that’s a very small number. So how much are we committed to decentralization as a government? I have a big concern with that.

Like I said, if we’re creating 56 and we’ve only decentralized 18 of them, it’s a very small number. It’s an astronomically small number. So are we really committed to decentralization or are we just doing it lip service to the Members that are out in the regions in trying to fulfill this priority of our Assembly?

I think people talk about the fact that we have a surplus, but we know that surplus is being expensed on financing of infrastructure projects. So I think we’re not in a bad position but, I mean, I am concerned with the growth of our budget in the last 10 years. I’ve said it in this House before that our budgets have grown astronomically, our PY positions have grown astronomically since division. Everything’s doubled, if not more. We need somehow to put a rein on some of these expenditures.

I know there’s a group in our public that want to see us do more, but there’s also a group that are doing business out there and saying how can we continue to afford this. We’re doing it with no increased taxes. Eventually that wall is going to come down where we basically have to flood people with a bunch of additional taxes to pay for some of these costs. I know devolution is coming, and I know the federal government is going to be kicking… We’re going to get more money from them on our resource sharing, but a lot of that is dependent on diamonds. If our diamonds go away, what does that do to our economy?

I think we need a better hold on growth of the size of the budget, growth the size of the public sector. We need to do more creating jobs in other ways. I am happy to see that we’re putting money into tourism. I agree that it’s not the amount that we wanted to see originally, but I think we’re going to get there. Maybe the phased-in approach is probably the most effective way to do that.

I guess those are my initial concerns with the budget, the fact that it’s just continuing to grow. It’s a growing monster, and we need to rein it in somehow.

Thank you, Mr. Bouchard. Mr. Miltenberger.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I think there is a shared concern about the growth of government. We’ve squeezed government back from the days of annual 6 percent plus growth down to 2, down to next year we’re going to be aiming to 1.5 percent.

As you’ve heard around the table already, there is a concern and demand that we spend more money on program areas at the same time as we try to manage our money. We agree that the size of the public service is very large. As we try to control our growth going forward, one of the things that we are looking at is controlling position growth, unless it’s tied to a legal or mandatory responsibility. Any other requests would have to be reallocation of internal resources.

I mentioned that next year we’re looking at being able to take advantage of some of the fruits of our labour of the last two years. That $50 million that I talked about is in addition to the Tuk-Inuvik highway, Stanton, and the Mackenzie Valley fibre optic line. We will be able to address other issues such as the red flag list.

We are committed to decentralization. At this point we’ve talked about it, and we’re planning it with devolution. We’ve done an initial phase 1 of taking existing low-hanging fruit, as it’s been described, for decentralization. But on a go-forward basis, we’re going to have to prove to this House what it means with the other jobs coming to us, especially the jobs coming from Ottawa. The commitment is there.

The surplus that we referred to is an operational surplus. We’re about $580 million in debt or thereabouts. Operational surpluses are savings during the year, one time, which we put towards infrastructure. I just want to make sure the folks listening don’t think that we’ve got a separate bank account where we saved all this money, because we have the ongoing debt which we have to manage.

I agree with the Member, and this Legislature has agreed, with the fiscal plan that we’ve laid out. We have to control our expenditures. We don’t want to count on taxation. It’s counterproductive at this point. It’s not so much a revenue issue at this point as it’s still an expenditure one. There are still additional revenues coming here which are not reflected in this budget because we haven’t inked the deal. When we get devolution, we’ll be coming back with a reworked fiscal framework.

I guess it’s those decentralization positions that I have some concern about. Devolution is a discussion of, there’s also opportunity for that area as well. One of the biggest concerns that I have with that is the Minister has indicated that they’re committed to decentralization and getting those devolution positions eventually out to the regions, but I haven’t seen a lot of activity or a lot of planning discussion on them making sure that communities are prepared for it.

I know in Yellowknife they’re building a new office building here that there’s probably going to be some available space. But in the communities, there’s very little planning being seen from my side of them preparing for any commitment to put jobs out into the regions. Some of my colleagues can correct me here, but I don’t see them out in the smaller communities and saying let’s see what office space is available so we can put jobs into Aklavik or Providence. Is there a commitment by this government? That’s my concern as well as the decentralization positions.

Like I said, 18 is a small number when we create 56 in one year. I’ve got statistics that we’ve created 80 in the last two years. Some of the numbers are indicating that probably 75 percent of those are created in Yellowknife or the North Slave area. What kind of decentralization commitment are we doing over the last couple of years? Those numbers are astronomical. The amount of creation we’re creating, we’re increasing the operating costs of this government plus we’re putting it all into one centre. I mean, we’ve seen some of the difficulties that happened in Yukon where Whitehorse is the centre of Yukon and there’s not too much activity anywhere else. It’s astronomical some of the numbers that are coming out.

The Member’s addressed that we’ve had some discussion about the issue of how committed are we to decentralization. It’s been a long running concern and interest of, I think, every Member outside of Yellowknife. The Chair and myself have been here the longest, and we’ve had some modest success over the years but not a lot. So this is probably the most political support there’s been for decentralization tied to devolution.

I know the Member for Hay River North would appreciate a little bit of background of back in 1967 when the plane came north with the Commissioner for the first time and how long we’ve been working towards this. We are committed. There’s a significant number of small community MLAs on Cabinet, and we are all serving at the pleasure of this august body. It is something I know as Finance Minister I’m definitely interested in, and we will be having to demonstrate that to you as we go forward here once we sign the Devolution Agreement.

We can’t just go willy-nilly. The work has been done initially. There have been community surveys. There are some communities that are decentralization ready: Hay River, Inuvik, Fort Smith – probably in that order – Simpson to a lesser degree. Work has to be done in other larger centres like Norman Wells. The smaller communities, we’re looking at other opportunities to put government jobs in there, like those government service officers, where we can put positions on the ground to assist people. We’re trying to pay attention to all the communities, recognizing that the centre does seem to grow.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. For general comments, next on my list I have Ms. Bisaro.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I have a number of comments, and they’re not in any particular order. I mentioned some of them in my statement today. I want to say off the top to the Minister and to the House, and I mentioned it in my statement, that I support and I did support and I do support the fiscal strategy that we have put in place, at least for the first two years and presumably for the next two years as we finish this Assembly.

I mentioned the electricity subsidy in my statement, so I don’t need to mention it again. But we need to look ahead to what we’re going to do when we come to the end of the rate increases and we can no longer continue putting money into electricity rates. I haven’t yet understood quite what we’re going to do when we come to the end of rising rates and there’s no subsidy.

One of the things that I am disappointed about that isn’t mentioned in the budget, that the 16th Assembly spent a great deal of time on, and that’s the Child and Family Services Act review. There were 75-some recommendations in that report. There was a commitment to child and family service committees in, I think, one or two budgets ago. I don’t see any reference to that in this particular budget. I also don’t see any reference to implementing any of the recommendations in the Child and Family Services Act review, particularly legislation which was recommended. There doesn’t seem to be any suggestion that any changes are coming forward any time soon.

I am disappointed that there’s no new revenue source in this budget, and I’ll speak a little bit more about that tomorrow.

The midwifery expansion I’m very pleased to see there, but I think the way the money is earmarked is not the right way to go. I think we ought to be putting the money into actual midwives on the ground as opposed to putting it into headquarters for planning.

The Minister of Health and Social Services confirmed to me the other day that we will have money in the budget for the day shelter here in Yellowknife. That’s very good news. It’s a very positive program. Were it to stop, I think it would be felt by both businesses and residents of Yellowknife but also by residents in other communities because, as I mentioned in my statement, many of the people using that shelter are not from Yellowknife.

The energy initiatives that are mentioned in the budget, some of them I have great difficulty with. I don’t think they’re initiatives. I think they’re more activities as opposed to initiatives. I regret that we are not in this Assembly taking the same approach to electricity initiatives that we did in the 16th, which was $60 million over a four-year period. There’s some $5 million identified by the Minister in this budget for electricity initiatives, but some of them, I think it was pointed out by Mr. Bromley, was to put high-efficiency boilers into public housing. I hardly see that as an energy initiative.

In terms of mental health and addictions, there are many concerns here. There should be a focus on prevention and promotion, and the government says there is. I don’t believe that the activities that have been identified in the budget as prevention and promotion are adequately labelled, I guess, for lack of a better way of putting it. I think many of the activities that the government says are prevention and promotion are not. I think they’ve just sort of put them into this list and labelled them as that in order to make things look good, so to speak.

There is no mention of a treatment centre. There is a mention of detox beds, but there’s no mention of a treatment centre. I believe the Minister of Health has referenced an analysis of Nats’ejee K’eh, but there needs to be a treatment centre in the largest city in our territory.

I am somewhat disappointed and concerned, I guess, that there’s no mention in terms of funding to replace the declining federal funding for housing. CMHC funding is declining continually. We’ve heard discussions over the last year or so that there is a plan for that. I don’t see any mention of that in the budget, and that is a huge concern. Housing is a really big issue for us, and how we are going to continue to fund our public housing over the next 10 years is largely unknown at this point.

Another thing that is not mentioned in the budget – I should say it is mentioned. The Family Violence Action Plan is mentioned, but it’s a continuation of funding from the previous year. The Family Violence Action Plan has many, many recommendations which have not yet been instituted. I don’t see any new money in the budget for advancing the Family Violence Action Plan activities.

The Minister mentioned that we have to focus on increasing employment opportunities. I had to wonder how. I don’t know what he means by that. Yes, we need to increase our employment opportunities, but it’s my understanding that a program which was initiated not so long ago, the Small Community Employment Program, it’s my understanding that that program is not going to be continuing in the next budget year. I really wonder how we’re going to increase employment opportunities if we’re taking a known program off the books.

I mentioned in my statement the early childhood development. The funding that’s being put into that is really a good-news story. I cannot stress enough that if we put money into zero to three, zero to four, preschool-aged children and families that it will have a huge impact on all of our residents, and over time, another 10 or 20 years, we will see great advances and very positive advances in how we are as a people. It will have an impact on our spending and it will reduce our spending for income support or many of our programs and services. We need to continue that focus on early childhood development.

Lastly, I mentioned in my statement, as well, the Anti-Poverty Strategy. I’m really glad that’s coming to fruition. I look forward to seeing the report that’s coming in a few months’ time. I am particularly pleased that there seems to be a bit of a change in government thinking, and in the thinking of Ministers from departmental silos and everybody out for their own to recognizing that, in order to make advances for us as a territory and for our people, we have to involve all departments when we do certain things. The early childhood development was one. There was a discussion, as well, about the Anti-Poverty Strategy and how much it relies on all departments working together. I was pleased to see that in the budget.

So that’s it, Mr. Chair. I don’t have any other comments at this point. I will have questions for the various Ministers when we come to it. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Minister Miltenberger.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. When the electricity subsidy that we have budgeted for to soften the rate shock is concluded, then we will transition to that significant rate increase, but over time as opposed to an increase that was initially potentially going to happen all in one year or two years and be very, very high.

I make note that the Minister of Health and Social Services is here about the Child and Family Services Act review and he will be in a position to speak to that. In fact, we do have a new revenue source that we’re working on, looking at. Of course, it’s tied initially to devolution, and that revenue source is the Resource Revenue Sharing Agreement that is part and parcel of that Devolution Agreement. In the longer term, it will also be the levers and opportunities that allows us to create and manage land, water and resource development as a territory.

We will look forward to the debate on midwifery again. There is a stabilizer program in Fort Smith, Hay River scheduled for next year. The year after that, I believe the plan is for some type of midwifery presence in Inuvik. I will look forward, as well, to the Member’s specific references where she thinks addictions and prevention has been mislabelled in her opinion to make it look like we are doing things…(inaudible)…

There is slightly over a million dollars in the budget to offset some of the declining CMHC funding. In addition to that, we are also looking at the possible divestment of some of the older units, as well, and a number of other things in terms of efficiencies and trying to cut our costs in terms of operation. It is a challenge.

Once again, we share the agreement on a continued focus on early childhood development as well as, as the Member has indicated, we’ll see what the Anti-Poverty Strategy tells us. We are prepared to respond when that’s done. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Next on my list I have Member Menicoche.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. The Minister has the much touted “hold the line” budget. One of the things that the hold the line budget does is, when you start concentrating on big ticket projects, it impacts the delivery of projects to the smaller regions and communities. But I just want to say upfront, high on my agenda would be the highways, particularly Highway No. 7, Trout Lake school.

However, I wanted to discuss a little bit about new and emerging issues, and that’s the oil and gas development that’s happening up in the Sahtu. It definitely impacts my region. I also feel that despite success with NWT Days, we lost an opportunity to lobby government in saying that impact funding is needed for this region and my region. There’s much to be done. We’re allocating, I think the Minister said, $1.2 million to assist the Sahtu. But what the federal government has done with other regions such as Voisey’s Bay, Churchill Falls is they’ve actually contributed with the impact and training of those regions. With a great lobbying effort, we could double, triple or even quadruple funding that we have to assist with the development there, most particularly the infrastructure.

There’s a huge opportunity for the Mackenzie Valley Highway starting north of Wrigley. I’ve always said some other regions get their special projects and I think it’s about time we started looking at the Mackenzie Valley. It doesn’t mean we have to take away from other regions. It just means that we just have to continue focusing, and with the investment from the federal government, we can certainly look at developing a Mackenzie Valley Highway.

I know that project descriptions are almost done from Wrigley right up to even Good Hope, I believe. So we’ve got a lot of the work done, so we can certainly make a business case. We should continue our lobbying efforts in Ottawa. In fact, we are working with Mr. Yakeleya. We will be working together over the next couple of weeks advancing this idea forward and, I believe, it should also be a priority of our government, only because it’s a new and emerging issue. Nothing we could have foreseen a couple of years ago.

The cost of living continues to be pressing in my smaller communities. Most particularly during my last tour, we were talking about the cost of fuel. The government controls the price of fuels in the small and remote communities. They are asking me, how can you approach government. What’s the best way you can reduce the cost of living when it comes to fuel? I guess one of the ideas that I had is that somehow, if we subsidize the cost of delivery, that would go a long way. I don’t know if that can be done right away, but I think we should work on that. We often say that devolution and extra funding is going to help a lot of different program areas, so I think if we can recover the cost of deliveries to the small communities, then the fuel will be almost $2 per litre. It’s only because in the smaller communities, these people use it on a day-to-day basis. They are out on the land, out in the boat, out on their skidoos. They need this gas to sustain themselves.

I want to focus on the health centre replacement for Fort Simpson. A planning study is coming up this fiscal year and I’ve already heard that when we replaced the health care centre in Fort Simpson, we are going to reduce long-term care beds again. So I’m looking at my colleague Mr. Bouchard who, right from day one, has said we’ve lost 10 long-term care beds in this new health facility and, potentially, I hope I don’t. I’ve been asking the appropriate Minister for more information on the planning studies, because I don’t want to lose these long-term health care beds. In today’s questioning, I think the Minister told Mr. Bouchard that we’ve got spaces for them, but if you are reducing, potentially, up to 20 beds, where are all these people going? Are you going to build a long-term care facility somewhere? I would like to know where all these long-term care beds are going.

I think the point of power is in the moment, Mr. Chair. If you are planning these health care facilities, just spend that little bit of extra money and continue with long-term care beds in the community. Hay River is an example now. They have to go through the capital planning process and somehow add 10 more long-term care beds to their facilities. I’m not too sure about government’s infinite wisdom on planning. Everybody knows that statistically we’ve got an aging population and we’ve got to plan for seniors.

I know that we increased the Health and Social Services budget in prevention and promotion. I’d like to ensure that these programming dollars get to the communities. It has been said in the media and in this House, we have great programming, but let’s make sure we spend the dollars and get them out to the communities. I think we often see we will develop a nice big program, but then we’ll create a job, often in Yellowknife. Out of a $400,000 program, you are creating a $160,000 job position in Yellowknife and then you cut your potential programming dollars right down to 60 percent almost. We have to deliver our programs, spend the programming dollars in the communities.

Finally, in conclusion, I mentioned devolution as well. As we continue our planning with devolution and continue our discussion, we have to create infrastructure in the regions and in the communities so that we can continue on with decentralization. I am a firm believer in it and we can do it. I know in the past, like in the community of Fort Simpson, departments have actually said, well, we wanted to give you a couple more jobs but there is no housing or office space there, we have to start planning for that, we have to build another office space in Yellowknife. That’s going to be their argument: there is no office space in Simpson, but we have lots in Yellowknife. Those are the things we have to be aware of and pay attention to. I would like to see that continued to be involved in devolution and planning for decentralization. I won’t be doing my job as MLA if I’m not trying to get resources out to the communities, decentralization and jobs out to the communities. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. Minister Miltenberger.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Next year, as we expand the capital plan, there will be money for highways like Highway No. 7 on an ongoing basis. Once we ink the devolution deal and we have that nailed down, the fiscal framework will change somewhat. As well, we still have to manage our money and control the growth, the size of government and all these good things. We have collectively agreed that we need to focus on infrastructure that we are spending roughly $1.6 billion on programs and services, and barely less than 10 percent of our money goes into trying to do the infrastructure needs, and replacements and maintenance we need.

Sahtu oil and gas, if it proves up, we will be in a significantly stronger position going forward in terms of approaching the federal government, in doing business and planning. If we know for certain that there is going to be a major… If it is going to move from exploration into development and implementation, then that will be a game changer.

Right now we are still in the very early days where we’re putting money and resources in there to try and make sure we can respond to the demand by the ramped up exploration, but the big next step is going to be to see what it tells us.

We agree that road north from Wrigley to Norman Wells is a logical next step for the Mackenzie Highway. Once again, if the Sahtu oil and gas play proves out, then there’s going to be a powerful economic driver to have that road put in.

The issue of trying to lower the cost of living in communities is something we are always interested in. Is it subsidizing the cost of delivery of fuel? I think that’s a discussion we need to look at. As I indicated, one of my earlier comments, just on liquid natural gas alone, if we can in fact lower the cost of energy generation in communities, we will be better off and that will lower the cost of living.

The discussion on the resources for community wellness plans and getting the money to communities, we agree. We want to get the money to where it’s targeted, but that is a discussion you will be able to have with the Minister of Health when he is at the table.

Once we have devolution and we get the money to the A base, we will be responsible for delivering all of those programs or services currently provided by the federal government. Then we will have the time to plan. We’ve already started the planning on devolution and some places that need beefing up. There will be an opportunity to look at what those are. I have indicated some of the communities are more ready than others; Hay River, Inuvik, Fort Smith. There are challenges in other communities, but we are committed to looking at those. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Could I ask the indulgence of the Chair for two minutes? I need some break time.

---Laughter

Thank you, Minister Miltenberger. With that, we will just take a quick recess. Thank you.

Welcome back to the committee. We are going to continue on with general comments. Next on my list I have Mr. Yakeleya.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. This budget, when you gotta go, you gotta go.

---Laughter

It is the learning process of doing this budget here over the last nine years. The Minister has been quite steady and has been quite consistent with the message from government. I do want to, on a serious note, offer my condolences to him and his family. That is part of business in the government and continuing on doing what we have to do.

The process that we have entered into is doing our committee work, doing our consultation with the Minister, but the Minister also… I want to hear more about the Minister’s public consultation on the communities with the demonstration of the legal blocks, and the efficiency and effectiveness and if we in our constituency… This is a good measurement if we’re doing our work right, by having the Minister do a public consultation on how the money could be spent, and what we’ve been telling them over there, that we’ve been meeting with the Minister in committee meetings to look at some of the wish lists of our ridings here. I want to see if we’ve got value for our dollar through that consultation process.

Mr. Chair, the wish list comes up every year, and we go through an exercise called the business planning session. I do want to give my thanks to the Minister and to the Cabinet Ministers for responding to some of the needs in the Sahtu in regard to the proving up of resources that are happening right now in the Sahtu with regard to the oil and gas exploration, the record 11 parcels that have been taken up by the five major oil companies to expend over $630 million for five years, with an extension of their licences to be renewed for another three or four more years.

The people in the Sahtu could see that we’re going to need the help of the government to deal with the increased activity in all sectors and all fronts of the territorial government. Even with the RCMP in Tulita, we thank you. I’ve been getting calls from Tulita saying that the increase of activity, because of alcohol and other issues that deal with the laws, there’s a high number of criminal activity happening in all the Sahtu communities. So we have some support there, also with ENR and ITI and Education. We want to thank the government for responding to the needs.

There’s probably going to be another request as the activities continue, once the oil companies look at the area they’re working on, and more looking needs to be done in that area to have a business case go forward to look at a different type of development in that area. So I do want to say thank you to the government for responding in this area for us.

The process that we go through is very tedious. It’s long. We have many meetings. We look at the other big projects that are going on with regard to devolution, decentralization, governments, infrastructure, programs and services, and we try our best to respond to some of these needs in our communities.

We also have to deal with the fiscal realities, as the Minister states, of what’s on the table right now. That’s what we have to deal with. Some of them seem more beneficial to the whole of the North, and some of the communities that I serve continue to push for basic essential services for the well-being of the people, such as the communities without RCMP stations or health nurse stations in our communities. There are communities today that are not served by those basic essential services. We need to look at some of those and start adjusting our priorities to say that, in this government, we’re going to make sure that we start filling those communities with RCMP officers or nurses or the quality of our educational schools or the so-called schools. It’s a very tough juggling priority we look at, but that’s what we are here for. We’re here for those things. There are many issues that I see in the budget that we can work on.

My colleague talked about the cost of living. It’s something this government can work with us, with Nutritious North Canada and look at the entry points of Nutritious North programs coming to the North. It might be cheaper for them to have an entry point in Norman Wells, Inuvik, Simpson, Hay River, so that we could take advantage of, once they are in Norman Wells, we could fly them to the Sahtu communities which would reduce the cost of food in our communities.

I talked to Minister Ramsay in our exchange the other day about providing some flexible, strong opportunities to have northern fish, bottled water, those types of things come into our community. I’m looking forward to some flexibility with this budget. I look at some of the things that we could embark on, such as the Voisey’s Bay model that Mr. Menicoche talked about, and see if that would fit the scenario with the Sahtu.

Some of our communities continue to suffer high employment, into the 42 percent, and somehow small employment opportunities, a program that was fought for and approved through this government, is a question that we need to think about. Some regions have and some regions have not. I want to look at the employment of our small communities and look at the small employment opportunities program that we had going.

I also want to look at decentralization through the percentage of positions in our region that are hired by the GNWT in the North Slave, South Slave, Tlicho, Sahtu, Beaufort-Delta. I want to see how we can get those numbers that Mr. Bouchard talked about, so that we can start preparing our regions for these decentralization positions, because what is there now for us to go on? Where are these positions coming? Which region is going to benefit in the millions once these positions are signed over to the GNWT? Where are they going to go? We have to have a hard look at these numbers, a sobering look and say, the matter of the fact, Jack, $20 million is going to come to Yellowknife and $100,000 or $2 million is going to come to the Sahtu or the Delta regions. We have to have that discussion. That’s why we’re here. Those kinds of things I want to look at.

The last thing I want to say is, we have to look at empowering our people. They have the answers. The Minister and the Cabinet, I want to thank you for the budget. It is a good budget, but we still have a lot of work to do. Let’s not sleep now. We have a couple of more years to work before we go back out and ask for our jobs again. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. Minister Miltenberger.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the Member’s comments. I will look at his last comment first where he talked about how we have to empower the people. That was one of the goals, I think, of the public consultation process, to take the time to go to each regional centre. Next year we want to improve on that process, but to talk to the people as Northerners about how we manage the money we have, living within our means, the challenges we face, the discussions we have here. Did we get value for money was the question that the Member asked. I would suggest to you that yes, we did, that it gave us some specific suggestions. It provided a broader confirmation that as a Legislature we are in touch with the people we represent. A lot of concerns that they’ve talked about we have been trying to address for some time.

The prevention piece, do a better job. More money for infrastructure. Look for efficiencies. Avoid red tape. Put more money into infrastructure. Take advantage of economic opportunities in an environmentally sustainable way. Those are all things that as a government we’re committed to try to do, and we’re going to… Some things we didn’t address in this budget but we’re going to go back again next year, next fall, and we will pick up some of the pieces.

One of the things that came up, for example I was asked about by the press, was there was a significant arts and crafts representation in the budget dialogues here in Yellowknife and we, in this budget, didn’t manage to address the concerns that they raised, so that will remain on the table in the coming year as we look at the next budget.

The key in the Sahtu, as we’ve talked about already, is should the Sahtu oil play prove up, the world as we know it will change. We appreciate the need for essential basic services in communities, and we’re going to continue to do the work that we’re doing. But once again, in the Sahtu if there is going to be that massive influx, a big oil play, lots of money, employment opportunities, then it’s going to be a matter of how to manage that success. We’ll be there.

We will have the discussion on decentralization, as we’ve committed to other Members. Over the long term, once we’ve signed the devolution deal and the money’s in our base, we don’t have to rush to do stuff right away. We have to take the time to think about it because once it’s done, as the Member said, it will be hard to undo.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Moving on with questions, general comments, I have Mr. Nadli.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just some comments from a territorial view in terms of where things are at with the Deh Cho, the riding I represent. For the most part, I think this budget is a status quo budget. There’s nothing really extraordinary about the budget, but it’s a responsible one in that we’re still experiencing a downturn in the economy so we have to really watch in terms of balancing our revenues and expenditures. For the most part, it’s a responsible budget, and at the same time, we have to give the Minister credit for leading a team on this effort to come up with a budget that’s workable, of course. He’s been at it for some time so I would like to give him at least credit for that.

In saying that, there are some concerns that I have in terms of how it is that we’re trying to maintain the budget. That one area that was highlighted just briefly is in terms of the personnel that we have or the workforce that has become the GNWT. We seem to have lots of people that we hire and we maintain the operations, obviously, in Yellowknife. If we identify an issue or concern that we would like to have addressed in the community, for the most part, I’m not saying that it happens all the time, but generally what our approach is to identifying issues, maybe create a position, and then, unfortunately, the obvious decision is to house the position here in Yellowknife. There is another option. The other option is to consider at least some discussions at the community level, and look at the approach of trying to build capacity at the local level and ensuring that locally, people understand how systems operate so at least we build the capacity to ensure that at least we give the option of communities preparing themselves for eventually becoming more responsible in terms of delivering the governance responsibilities to their residents. I would like to at least be constructive and bring that forward and see if that could be realized within this fiscal year to ensure that we meet communities to try and ensure that we build up to capacities.

There are some good things that have become of this budget and, of course, it’s ongoing. There’s the fibre optic opportunity that would be extended right down the Mackenzie Valley. There are some good energy projects, as well, that have been initiated, like efforts made to take advantage of the biomass initiative. I’m hoping that it won’t wane. We need to ensure the sustainability of this operation, that it’s not just a one-time thing. A program initiative like that, I think, periodically we need to step back and try to fine tune it so that at least it’s delivering not only the needs of addressing energy options but at the same time making it sustainable so that they can be initiatives that perhaps we can carry out for a long stretch and ensure that we maximize the opportunities for it.

Briefly too, in terms of some of the other concerns, there are some initiatives. One of them is from one end we have the Economic Development Strategy that we’re developing. I look forward to that. Of course, the Mineral Development Strategy that we’re developing. We need to try to balance the social needs in terms of some of the real challenges that we have at the community level. We have rates of social issues that we need to contend with at the same time. There are some very fundamental challenges such as the rate of education and training of our people.

There are standing socio-economic agreements at the mines that have to be honoured not only from industry but from governments. The governments, at the same time, really need to extol and encourage our people to advance education as an opportunity to at least elevate them out of the circumstances that sometimes beleaguer them and withhold them from going beyond some of the challenges that people find themselves in.

Briefly, if there’s anything that I kind of look forward to is the communities that I represent and looking at their aspirations. I think there’s an interest to see at some point, maybe it could be next year or it could be within this period, in terms of providing programs and services and looking at the needs of the public in terms of safety. I think there’s an initiative in terms of trying to enhance the volunteer fire departments at the local level to ensure they are prepared fully to be on the offensive if a matter arises on the highway and they have to mobilize the crew to go out into the highway and help the public in terms of, perhaps, a vehicle fire. They need to be in a very ready and poised position to respond to that. I feel that we could be doing more in terms of preparing local fire departments, which are for the most part in the communities I represent volunteer fire departments.

Of course, there are other initiatives that I feel that, perhaps, will come down the road within another year or so and that’s recreational infrastructure. Looking at addressing at least the needs of our youth, I think sport and recreation is a very positive thing. It’s strong. We need to try to meet the interests of our youth to ensure we have facilities wherever we can. I know in some communities, like the community I come from is at least examining the idea of trying to enhance the use of the arena, the recreation complex, and that’s going to require some cooperation and a level of discussion with the community levels.

There are other initiatives, too, like with communities to try to undertake more with less. The key thing is that we’re trying to build capacity and prepare our communities to deliver these services to the residents and at the same time trying to live within the means of the budget. Sometimes we don’t have a lot, but we really have to go that extra mile to carry at least limited funds.

For the most part those are just some of the comments. I understand we’re going to have more opportunity down the road. Generally, for the time being those are the comments that I have.

Thank you, Mr. Nadli. Mr. Miltenberger.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate, as well, Mr. Nadli’s comments and recognition of the hard work that the folks have put in to try to build this budget. His concerns are very consistent in terms of some of the outside-of-Yellowknife issues: size of the bureaucracy, centralization versus decentralization.

The biomass project in his riding is being designed for the long term to be sustainable. We’re working on forest management agreements. The proponent has worked very hard to build up a business relationship with the communities and the Aboriginal governments, has signed agreements, looked into the employment opportunities, the partnership arrangements that are there, and it should stand the territory in good stead for many, many years to come, both in terms of the energy and the employment opportunities it’s going to provide.

As the Member indicated, there will be significant opportunity over the next five weeks with the other Ministers to discuss a lot of the detail that the Member has raised in areas like recreation facilities and employment opportunities and those type of things on a going forward basis and some of his suggestions for the future.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Moving on with questions, I have Mr. Hawkins.