I’d like to recognize a long-term Housing employee, Mr. Jim White, of Yellowknife Housing Authority.
I am pleased to recognize the family of Jim Peterson: his wife, Margaret Peterson; his daughter Amanda, Jim’s son Chad and also close friends Jack Levesque, Sandy Osborne and Don Santos. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, I’d like to recognize an aboriginal filmmaker who made it in the world in the film business: my brother Raymond Yakeleya.
Mr. Speaker, I’d like to follow up on my Member’s statement with some questions for the Minister of Justice.
Considering the very tight rental market in Yellowknife at the moment and considering the rent increases that many of my constituents are facing, can the Minister advise if the proposed amendments to the Residential Tenancies Act will address the issue of limiting rent increases?
I am going to rule that question out of order. That is on the order paper for today as legislation.
Interjection.
Oral questions. The honourable Member for Tu Nedhe, Mr. Beaulieu.
Mr. Speaker, earlier in my Member’s statement I spoke of the serious issue of lack of housing for teachers, and I’d like to ask the Minister of ECE some questions.
Mr. Speaker, can the Minister advise me if the department has any strategy for providing teachers’ housing in smaller non-market communities?
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Mr. Lafferty.
Mr. Speaker, we realize that housing is a big issue in the Northwest Territories, especially for professional staff that we have in small communities and those most isolated communities. Our department has been working with the communities, with the leadership, with the Housing Corporation. I’d just like to highlight that we’ve met with district education authorities, the council and also with the superintendent this past couple of weeks in Norman Wells. We did highlight housing as one of the priorities of our discussion, and there have been a couple of options that were brought forward.
Mr. Speaker, I’m glad to say that our department is following up on those options. Follow-up meetings will be undertaken, and I will certainly address that with Members here. Mahsi.
Can the Minister advise the House if there is any dialogue that’s tied to developers as far as providing private market housing in non-market communities?
Like I said, the ongoing consultation will be between the superintendents, the DEAs and our department. It’s all preliminary right now. Certainly the private contractors will play a role. We are working closely with the Housing Corporation as well. They have dialogues with local contractors in the communities. What it comes down to now is forming a partnership with the communities. We are in the process of forming a partnership with both ECE and the Housing Corporation and with the small communities that were faced with housing shortages.
Can the Minister advise the House of anything specific that he can mention in the House about what type of work has occurred between ECE and the Housing Corporation in this area?
I appreciate the Member’s questioning of this area. We have had a dialogue with the Housing Corporation and our department, and we are coming up with options. We are doing some pilot projects in one of the communities where there is a loan guarantee from the Housing Corporation on to the contractor in the community to build units. That’s an area that we are focusing on, as well as an immediate plan. For long-term plans we are coming up with options to consider from the superintendents, the DEA chairs. Certainly those will be taken into consideration to deal with the housing shortages in the Northwest Territories for all 33 communities.
Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Final supplementary, Mr. Beaulieu.
Mahsi cho, Mr. Speaker. Could the Minister commit to a continued dialogue with the DEAs on housing teachers and report back to the House within six months so that we can get an update on any progress on housing for teachers?
This is an important topic. It’s one of the priorities of the Northwest Territories, so certainly, yes, I will commit to keeping the Members informed of the progress we’re making.
Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Oral questions. The honourable Member for Nunakput, Mr. Jacobson.
Mr. Speaker, in my Member’s statement I asked the Minister of Health about my x-ray machine in the community of Tuk, if she could look into the problem and get back to me early next week and let me know how much longer this will affect my community.
Minister of Health, Ms. Lee.
I’d like to thank the Member for bringing that matter to my attention. I had a chance to meet with him and the mayor of Tuk this morning for breakfast, and that issue was brought up too. I am in the process of finding out details on that, and I’m hoping that I can have answers for him by the end of today.
Supplementary question, Mr. Jacobson? Okay. Mr. Hawkins.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As everyone who owns a house or a car knows, fuel prices seem to continually go up and down, and there’s no stability. Many people are familiar with the issue of last product in, first product out, so that’s sort of the pricing principle. As many people know, especially here in Yellowknife, when the ice bridge went out, no new product was trucked in to Yellowknife — I can tell you that — but the prices fluctuate. Based on that sort of pricing model, it seems completely unreasonable that fuel prices were going up and down.
I wrote the Minister of Finance about some pricing regulations and possibilities. There are other provinces across Canada, five to be exact, that regulate to some degree fuel prices, and that’s motor fuels as well as home-heating fuels.
Mr. Speaker, my question to the Minister of Finance is: will he look into this issue to see if we can create some type of stability here for the Northwest Territories, sort of something to take the volatility out of the ups and downs of the fuel pricing?
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. The honourable Minister of Finance, Mr. Roland.
Mr. Speaker, the area of fuel prices in the Northwest Territories is impacting across the territory, especially in our more remote communities.
The factor of the free market plays a significant role in the larger communities, where private businesses bring the product in and sell it to consumers. We’ve looked at other jurisdictions where they’ve had what would be considered moderate as a potential price control.
The fact is that when you look at the other pieces of legislation out there, it’s not very clear, and it’s not necessarily price control. There may be a delayed impact, but there’s still an impact of that. When you do a price comparison across the country, there are still a number of other jurisdictions that are in the neighbourhood of beginning to pay the price that we’ve seen, at least in this community. We have to remember that in our smaller communities, we even pay a higher price as well.
Mr. Speaker, I’m not going to say that the Minister is completely wrong, but I just don’t believe him.
Mr. Speaker, the fact is that a PUB type of system will help protect and stabilize prices. Five out of our ten provinces in Canada can’t be completely wrong by finding an approach to balance this out. It would still allow that industry to raise prices, yet it would put the onus on them to bring a mild amount of justification.
So, Mr. Speaker, with all of that said, would the Minister of Finance reconsider his position in the context of providing a stable, protected environment for our consumers in the Northwest Territories?
We are open to looking at ways where we can mitigate the impact of the cost of living in the Northwest Territories. What we do and the impact of what we do is something we have to look at.
The research we’ve done to date shows, in some of these cases, if you set up a structure that starts limiting the free market capability, we end up putting other pressure on ourselves. Jurisdictions have found that if you tighten up the market so much and regulate it as a government, you reduce that free market capability, and they go out and sell their product in other places where they do make their money and then put an additional squeeze on our own constituents. So we have to take that in consideration.
We would be willing to look at it under the refocusing or the cost-of-living scenarios that we have to look at as a government.
Mr. Speaker, that’s the approach I’m looking for, so I will say that, hopefully, this will be my last question. Is that a commitment that they will include that into that process, or is that sort of, “We’ll think about it”?
Mr. Speaker, we’ll be willing to look at it. Within the cost-of-living strategic initiatives there are a whole number of areas, and we definitely have to look at how we impact the lives of people in the Northwest Territories.
Thank you, Mr. Roland. Oral questions. The honourable Member for Hay River South, Mrs. Groenewegen.
Mr. Speaker, I think that the Premier has now pretty well heard consistently from most of the Members of this House that there’s some unhappiness over here about the consultation and the communication since the 16th Assembly took office. Now, I don’t want to say that this is a universal problem. I mean, certainly some Cabinet Ministers we’ve been working with have been doing a great job. They get back to us. They communicate.
But how we communicate and work together as Cabinet and committees and in that structured, formal framework that we work within.... Collectively, there has been something lacking here. So I hope that the Premier is starting to get that message and won’t deny it.
Example: Maximizing Opportunities, Managing This Land, Reducing the Cost of Living and Refocusing Government. Why can those committees, chaired by different Cabinet Ministers, not include, as has been requested, representation from Regular Members on this side of the House?
Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. The honourable Premier, Mr. Roland.
Mr. Speaker, there are a lot of Cabinet committees that are established that look at budgetary issues, legislation, policy. There is no joint committee process. There are a number of areas we’ve worked with; for example, Members on the climate change piece have put that together. There has been the Mackenzie Gas Project joint committee. So those things we can be looking at to salvage.
There are some areas where, as we’re getting underway with the new way of doing our budgeting process, those strategic initiatives fit at this time. I’ve said to Members already that once we have that up and going, we’ll be sitting down with Members on a more regular basis at some point to go through the items before they become even a draft main document. But that will take commitment from Members to agree to sit down and have those discussions and meetings about timing and how we go through those initiatives.
There has been a lot of emphasis put on changing the way we do business. The reason why I referenced those four committees is because they are strategic initiative committees that are supposed to take the strategic priorities of this government that we collectively agreed upon. These were formed after that to try and bring focus to the various Cabinet committees. We don’t want to sit on every Cabinet committee, but some we have requested, and we have met with no favourable response, no agreement. It is an interesting dynamic.
When I was in my Member’s statement referring to the fact that maybe Cabinet is a contradiction in consensus government, the Premier seemed to have a bit of a scoffing reaction to that. I suggested committees of oversight, like they have at municipal councils. Tell me why that would be such a foreign thought.
Committees of oversight do exist. The Standing Committees on Social Programs, Economic Development and Infrastructure and of Priorities and Planning are looking at what the government is doing and keeping us accountable. Let’s also remember the fact that it wasn’t that long ago in the history of the Government of the Northwest Territories when Ministers of this government went down to Ottawa and sat at those tables. In fact, we didn’t sit at the tables; we sat in the hallway. Let’s be realistic. If we’re going to talk about being a grand municipal council instead of a territorial government, we’ll get even less attention at the national table. So when we talk about credibility of this government and the views of this government, we have to keep that in mind and how we structure ourselves.
I believe there needs to be a process established over the life of this government to make some changes in the future of government operations, and maybe one of them is actually calling into question consensus government. I’ve said that I’m consensus to the core in how we do business, and I tried to operate in that. Although there have been a few Members who’ve said they’ve been walking in the blind with what our plans are, I would dispute that fact, and I can show and I’m prepared to get the times we’ve sat down with committees. We’ve put initiatives on the table, we’ve waited for response, and we’ve made some changes — the same process we’ve used in the past. I want to incorporate and get more dialogue between committees through these initiatives. I’m looking forward to that piece of it.
The Premier refers to getting a seat at those FPT tables. I would like to suggest that all that money that is spent to take Ministers, deputy ministers, officials down to all those FPT meetings, which they run up and down the country going to, is of limited benefit to this government. We’ve got huge problems and issues that we have to work out right here at home. Maybe Ministers would have more time to pay attention to what’s going on in the Northwest Territories if they weren’t running off to every city in the country, getting together with FPT Ministers. I would suggest that they are of limited value. You can read the communiqué that comes out at the end. You could probably just bring it home, and that would be good enough.
We are all equally elected Members of this Assembly. When we get here, we expect to have effective and meaningful input. I would like to refute the Premier’s insinuation that any offer that’s been made to this side of the House has not been fully received and accepted and participated in. The prime example for me is....
Do you have a question, Mrs. Groenewegen?
Yes. I’d like to ask the Premier: going forward, what areas or avenues does he see available to him to set the example as the Premier of this government to provide more opportunity for a government of inclusion?
The fact is that we are trying to go down that path. I’ve offered to Members a different approach to take to the budgeting exercise. As I said yesterday, I was told to get the budget done; be ready for May–June. We’ve done that. I’ve said to Members that would put us back into the same old way of doing business as the Government of the Northwest Territories. We’re in that, and that process has not changed. I would like to see a change going forward. As I proposed to Members, when we do these strategic initiative committees, the lead chairs and deputies would be going to committee on a more regular basis to help get their information for proposals as we begin to draft it.
The typical process would be that letters go out to the departments in June. Departments start doing that exercise. Members see the draft of this plan in September. Then they make remarks, and we make some adjustments. We want to change that process.
Thank you, Mr. Roland. Third supplementary, Mrs. Groenewegen.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. If the Premier didn’t have time to put together a budget that was going to be palatable, that was going to be reasonable, then we should have gone with the status quo. What we’ve ended up with is something not very acceptable. I know we asked for a compressed process. We expected better than this. We didn’t get it.
Would the Premier agree to return to an interim status quo budget until such time as we can come together and not take these very, very drastic measures that are proposed in this budget?
Oral questions. The honourable Member for Kam Lake, Mr. Ramsay.
Mr. Speaker, my questions today are for the Premier, and it gets back to my Member’s statement talking about the Deh Cho Bridge project. We’re all well aware that the project is moving ahead and going forward. During the past four years I’ve probably asked close to a hundred questions on the Deh Cho Bridge project itself, trying to get a better understanding of what the government was doing and why it was doing it.
On February 8 I asked a number of written questions to the Premier in regard to what level of detailed information the government and Department of Transportation had at their disposal in order to sign the concession agreement on September 28. I just wanted to mention that a response to a written question that was tabled in the House yesterday is missing a response to question 2. The government admits to basically not having any updated cost-benefit analyses prior to signing the $165 million deal. As I said earlier, that is just absurd.
I know the Premier is committed to doing a post-mortem on the accountability to try to find out exactly why this happened and how it happened, how public funds were put at risk. I’d like to ask the Premier where he is at in this post-mortem on this bridge.
