Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. The honourable Premier, Mr. Roland.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m working with the Department of Executive, pulling all the dates, times and all of the process that unfolded, looking at our legislation, looking at the process and looking at how we can tighten it up. That work is ongoing. I’ll have to get an update here within days, and I can get back to the Member as to when we hope to bring on our responses forward to committee. The work is ongoing.
We have to be clear on this. We’re also trying to relook at history here. There were all kinds of meetings, as we tabled in this House back to Members, about meetings, times, events. If you want to relive that again, the dreams about bridges, the fact is that the Government of the Northwest Territories.... If we held ourselves to the same measures that some Members are trying to hold government to on one project, we would have to close three-quarters of our communities and move them into Yellowknife or maybe move Yellowknife or the Northwest Territories into a small community in Alberta or B.C.
When we talk about the message we’re trying to send to Canada and the fact that we need investment in the Northwest Territories in stuff like hydro development, in stuff like the Mackenzie Valley Highway — when we talk about the cost per capita, they could easily come back to us and say it’s not cost-effective to invest in the Northwest Territories. But they do, because we are part of Canada, and they recognize that difference. We’ve got to start doing that same thing in the Northwest Territories.
I don’t dispute the fact that we should be doing some of that fine work that the Premier talks about, but we should have a foundation of information in order to base our decisions.
Mr. Speaker, I want to ask the Premier pretty much a point-blank question: how could any government sign a $165 million concession agreement three days prior to an election, with a five-year-old piece of cost-benefit analysis work being their only instrument that they have at their disposal? How could that happen? How is that good government, Mr. Speaker?
Mr. Speaker, like I’m telling the people of Canada, the federal government and the Prime Minister, the Mackenzie Valley Highway is of national interest. It will help us economically, and it will help us develop the territory. That project is in a similar fashion; it’s not only one piece that you make your decision on.
Where’s the vision? We need to ask ourselves: where’s the vision for the Northwest Territories? Do we want to stay with a “hat-in-hand” mentality, going to Ottawa saying: Give us more; give us more? Or instead: Give us the tools, and we can build the Northwest Territories.
The Premier has a good point there: we need to come up with a vision; we need to engage the stakeholders here in the Northwest Territories. In this project the stakeholders weren’t engaged. They were engaged in 2002 and 2003. The government has yet to prove to residents in the North Slave region that the cost of living will not go up as a result of this bridge being built. Where’s that evidence, Mr. Speaker? I’d like to ask the Premier that question. Thank you.
I think that question has been answered a number of times — of course, not to the satisfaction of the Member. I think all you have to do right now is drive through some of the business parking lots and look at all the tractor-trailer units parked in their parking lots, because they had to stock up for the closing of the ice crossing. Let’s ask the businesses that.
Thank you, Mr. Roland. Final supplementary, Mr. Ramsay.
Mr. Speaker, that’s the problem: they didn’t go back out and they didn’t ask the businesses. They asked them in 2002 and in 2003. They didn’t go back out, prior to signing that concession agreement on September 28, and talk to the stakeholders in the North Slave region.
I would like to ask the Premier: what is the timeline for coming back with this look into exactly what happened, so the residents of the Northwest Territories can finally get a better picture of how exactly the government put $165 million at risk? Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, I told the Member in an earlier question already today, earlier in this line of questioning, that I would be going back to the Executive to get the timeline and come back to the Member. I’m prepared to do that.
But let’s be realistic here. We’re talking about an investment in the Northwest Territories. The Member sees it as risk. I think we’re making investments in the Northwest Territories for the betterment of the Northwest Territories, for the long-term credibility and development of the Northwest Territories.
Thank you, Mr. Roland. Oral questions. The honourable Member for Nahendeh, Mr. Menicoche.
I would like to ask the Minister responsible for the NWT Housing Corporation some questions, most particularly on the appeal system. Also, I would just like to thank him for coming to the Nahendeh riding. We did visit a few communities there, and we look forward to a return visit.
The continued concern that I get on a daily basis when I travel in my communities is basically appealing decisions by the housing corporation board. They are wanting to follow up on issues. I’m finding that an appeals system — and it’s something that I’ve been pursuing for some time now — if it were in place, would address a lot of these concerns from constituents and concerned citizens.
Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. Mr. Miltenberger.
Mr. Speaker, I would like to commit publicly that as the Minister responsible for the Housing Corp., we’d like to continue to conclude our trip, which was interrupted. I’ll commit to that.
The issue of the appeal process, as well, the Member has raised before, and it’s a good one. It’s one the Housing Corporation has put on their work list, and we are looking forward to being able to come back to committee, and to this Assembly, in the fall. We’ve indicated, as well, to the Member that we’d like to be able to look at processes that are already there that we could either pattern ourselves after, such as the Student Financial Assistance appeals or the Income Support appeals process. We recognize that the Member has raised a very good point, and it would give another avenue for due process for clients.
Quite often it’s simple things that constituents are appealing to the Housing Corporation and the managers, but once that manager makes a decision, he’s not going to change his mind. So they’re coming to me, as their MLA, to say, “There’s a glitch here in the system. I’ve been asking about this renovation,” or “It needs repairs.” Often it’s simple things, and having an outlet for constituents to address those concerns is very important.
I’d just like to ask the Minister, Mr. Speaker, what type of appeal system does he foresee being implemented?
Mr. Speaker, as I’ve indicated, we’re going to look closely at the appeal system that is now there for Income Support — there’s another one for Student Financial Assistance — and we’re going to do a jurisdictional check as well. The intent is not to try to recreate the wheel or reinvent the wheel, so we’re going to take the best from the systems that are there. We’ll be sharing that work with the Members and the committees.
Once again if the Minister can let me know, and let the House know: how soon will they begin this work, and when can they implement such a system?
Mr. Speaker, as we conclude this budget process and as we move forward, that item has already been identified. As the business is laid out and the work is laid out for the coming year, that’s one of the items we intend to be able to bring back in the fall, with a clear outline of what’s being recommended.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Final supplementary, Mr. Menicoche.
Will the process include any public consultations? Mahsi.
Mr. Speaker, the intent will be to come up with what’s being recommended, walk it through, give the committee and the Members a chance to look at it, and in due course, subsequent to that, of course, we’ll be looking to respond to the committee’s feedback. As we move forward, that type of communication and consultation process will be built in.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Oral questions. The honourable Member for Great Slave, Mr. Abernethy.
My question today is to the Minister responsible for Health and Social Services, and it is related to my Member’s statement yesterday concerning federal responsibility for Indian and Inuit health care costs.
The federal government has limited growth on their portion of the Indian and Inuit health care at around 2 per cent. Real growth in health care is around 7 per cent or more. As a result, the GNWT is falling further behind. The feds owe our health system more money to support our health care system — around $95 million to date.
So my questions are: what is Health and Social Services doing to collect these outstanding dollars? What is the status of any negotiations that are going on between the department and the federal government? How long can we wait, or expect, or.... How long is it going to take before we develop some sort of funding model to flow a larger portion of funds to us so that we’re not relying on the 2 per cent?
Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. Ms. Lee.
Mr. Speaker, I can advise the Member that this definitely is an issue that is on top of our agenda, not only for myself, as the Minister, but for the Cabinet as a whole. The Premier has brought this issue up in all of his meetings with the Prime Minister and the Minister of DIAND. I am working on meeting with the Minister of Health, the Hon. Clement, as soon as we can arrange a meeting to speak about this in person. I also need to clarify that the issue here is about a gap between the funding that we get from the federal government for our aboriginal peoples, but it’s really not an outstanding bill where it’s about just collecting it. It’s a disagreement, and it’s a dispute. It’s a gap, because the federal government placed a cap. They put a cap on it, and we need to renegotiate that.
So I think it’s really important for the Members to know that we need to renegotiate it. It’s not a matter of sending an invoice and collecting the money and actions that we need to do that. There’s a lot more complexity to this, and we have been spending lots of energy on it.
I do understand that it is a gap. I understand that right now their increased costs are based on around 2 per cent, and we know that the real costs of health care are increasing about 7 per cent or more a year. I understand that.
The gap is real. You need to find a way to renegotiate that cap that they have placed on you. So I’m once again going to ask: what kind of timeline are you working on to develop or increase that cap, or negotiate an increase to the cap, so that we can stop losing money that they clearly owe us?
From our point of view, our timeline is as soon as possible, but obviously, there are lots of parties involved. Not only is it the federal government, but all the other governments that fall under this agreement. It is an agreement that we need to open up and renegotiate. We have asked for that negotiation to happen. We have not heard back yet.
So timeline.... We will work on that as much as possible, because it is a crucial issue. We are looking at all options available to the government, to see what additional pressure and stress we could put on this so we could come to a resolution. Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Lee. Oral questions. The honourable Member for Weledeh, Mr. Bromley.
Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Finance and the Premier. Again, because of communications or lack of same, our public has been left trying to sort of work by Braille, if you will, to figure out on what basis this government has made projections that put us into deficit a couple years or three years into our term here. This has obviously cost the public and non-government organizations, volunteer groups, a lot of resources as they try and solve this mystery.
Will the Premier commit to immediately providing the public, who are our partners and our clients, with full information that clarifies the basis on which these projections were made, and provide the sources of the information? I know the government has chosen to flip back and forth to suit their needs between the Main Estimates and the Main Estimates as revised, so I’d like that to be clear and provided immediately to the public, so that they can give us the feedback we need and are responsible to bring to this House.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Mr. Roland.
Mr. Speaker, we have provided, in tabling the documents…. It’s the first time we’ve tabled this set of documents so that they’re available for public review. The Budget Address, as well, has a lot of information on the stats and where we’ve come from. It’s not a myth out there. We’ve had to build on.... Based on our assumptions and knowing that our formula financing going forward is fixed — there’s little adjustment to that, and our growth of expenditures is there — we’re going to run into problems. So we have to take action now, before we end up in a situation where all our flexibility is gone.
During good times we should be planning and making sure we don’t end up in bad times. So we’ve had to take the steps to limit our growth or manage our growth, which means there are some changes, and reinvest some of those dollars into priority areas. We’ve got lots of information here that’s available to the public. If there’s specific questions, as we go through each department, more detail will be made available through Members’ questions to Ministers and their deputies and senior staff here. That is available to the public as well.
Mr. Speaker, I acknowledge I’ve had some remarks from the Premier. I also acknowledge that there’s tons of information out there — big thick documents. Certainly the Budget Address I find very murky. It basically talked about the top 6 or 8 per cent of the budget. I’m asking the Premier: will he provide the public with exactly the information on which the projections were based — the graph and the sources of it, the tables that show the decline in revenue and the sources of the decline in revenue and so on, the exact basis? In science, conclusions are not acknowledged until they're duplicable. To this date there is no duplicability, if you will — oh my gosh, the Hansard...
Laughter.
...to this projection. So I ask the same question again.
Mr. Speaker, as we have in past, as governments have practised, part of the Budget Address is a document on the future, the fiscal forecasting, the fiscal strategy that’s been put in place. In fact, the fiscal strategy is outlined in the document that was tabled, part of the address that’s available to the public. In the back section under B-3, it shows in the graphs that if we don’t make any changes, that’s where we would end up. Those are based on the information we have available right now through our formula financing, with our agreement with the federal government, our own-source revenues, and estimates are made.
We also have to mention that science says we come from monkeys.
I have to say, going back to some of the remarks I’ve heard from the Minister and the Premier.... I don’t, of course, debate the need to live within our means and so on. That’s not what this is about. This is about clarity and communication.
The public has gone to hire economists from afar to try and make sense of this murkiness, and it’s still not clear. Somehow there seems to be a gap between the Premier’s understanding of the situation and the public’s. Will the Premier address this gap and make it plain?
If the Member is talking about the Parkland report, that’s one thing — hired by the unions in the Northwest Territories to look at our numbers, come up with their assumptions and present those, in a sense, to question where we’ve come from as a government. I disputed those numbers. As the Member stated, we can both — the government and people out there — look at numbers, put them on a scale and say things are actually quite good.
Talk about the surplus. The surplus is a planned surplus so we can fund our capital programs. I’ve been saying that for years and I continue to say it. We need that surplus to help us with our capital programs. That surplus comes from O&M expenditures we spend on an annual basis.
So if there are avenues to put more clarity out there, that’s one thing. I believe, for example, it started — and I think it’s a good process — with Members having a pre-budget consultation process. We are taking that advice in our work, as well, and I think that’s another avenue we can use in doing that. We’ve got lots of information here now that’s available. We’ve got all the detail in here now that they can have a look at. Once they have specific questions on those areas, we’ll try to address them.
Thank you, Mr. Roland. Oral questions. The honourable Member for Mackenzie Delta, Mr. Krutko.
Mr. Speaker, with regard to my Member’s statement regarding the access road to Aklavik, I moved a motion in this House, and it was passed unanimously. Yet nowhere to be seen is there even any reference to the road to Aklavik.
I see that the access road to Tuk has been approved. I’m looking at a budget of $12 million. Yet, Mr. Speaker, a necessity to communities is gravel. When this government spends $2 million to move gravel from Inuvik to Aklavik by barge, there’s insanity to that. I think it’s important that this government realizes that we are dealing with threats by way of global warming, floods and whatnot in a community in which the gravel source is ten kilometres from the community.
This government has spent money in the past for access road funding, which was an application-based program for $50,000 a year. This government knows about the specific requests. So I’m asking the Minister a question. This government is going to be getting some $275 million from the federal government by way of the Building Canada Fund, strategic infrastructure investment fund, but nowhere are the small communities even hinted at by way of these projects.
There's a list that has been sent to Ottawa. I’d like to ask the Minister or the Premier: how can communities get added to this list, knowing that the government has already submitted a list to the federal government for these particular projects? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Krutko. Minister of Transportation, Mr. Yakeleya.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Since 1995–1996 and 2004–2005, this department has been working with the community of Aklavik on the ATV community access road project. In 2001 the community of Aklavik requested that the department relook at the ATV trail and convert it into an all-weather road to the source that Mr. Krutko made reference to, at Willow River.
This department has been listening to the community of Aklavik and the communities down the Mackenzie Valley. We have spent $309,000 on this access road now that’s been determined.
We are committed to building partnerships with industry at the level of government, such as mentioned yesterday by the Finance Minister, and some of the partnerships are going under the Building Canada Fund.
We are very much interested in going back into Aklavik, relooking at the request, and sitting down with the community. The Member and I had some discussions on when we could get into Aklavik and have a community discussion in terms of what can we do to look at their needs. We also need to talk with the community in terms of their gravel sources, as to who does this. We've stated that they're now responsible for such projects as gravel sources. It will be coming up in our discussions with my officials. We are prepared to go in to the Member’s riding.
Mr. Speaker, the Minister was nowhere even close to answering my question. My question was: what does the community have to do to get on the list of projects that are going to be funded through the federal government, through the Building Canada Fund, the strategic initiative investment fund?
Nowhere on this list do I see any communities that are not in Ministers’ ridings, for one thing.
Interjections.
I’d like to ask the Minister: what do you have to do to get on the list that we’ve been sending to the federal government? We don’t have input from this side of the House?
Mr. Speaker, we have to go through a process. The other projects have gone through a process.
The community of Aklavik is again asking for an issue that.... This project in Aklavik is something that we have to look at very seriously. We have to do some engineering; we have to do some studies. We do it every year, as we go through our lists.
The project we identified is somewhere in the Building Canada Fund, in terms of our research and development initiatives, but we have to do some work there.
So we are continuing to work with the community of Aklavik, going forward on a yearly basis. We’ll have to have some more discussions with the community and the Member. And from there, we will take it as to what are the priorities of the Government of the Northwest Territories, in terms of investments in our infrastructures.
Mr. Speaker, I will try to make it as simple as I can. There was a list submitted to the federal government on projects from this government. We as Ordinary Members have not had an opportunity to put items on that list, but yet, through the strategic committees that are set up on the other side, they had that discussion internally. There was a list sent to Ottawa in regard to projects they wanted to see, on that side of the House, but nowhere on that list is reference to a project that I would like to see on it.
I’d like to ask the Minister: when will the Members on this side of the House have an opportunity to put on that list projects that have been in the books going back to 1991? All we are doing is talking about this project. When are we going to really see the reality of something happening here?
Mr. Speaker, let’s be very clear. We had the list, which we put together. We met with the committees. We’ve talked about the review on a yearly basis. We’ll come back again to have some further discussions.
I have mentioned to the Member that under research and development and the Building Canada Fund — the portion that we will take from the funding there — we will look at the Aklavik gravel source and other projects. We have to look at investment right down the Mackenzie Valley for people in the Beaufort-Delta or the Gwich’in area.
The department has invested heavily into the Member’s riding. The Aklavik gravel source is up there, and he’s been talking to me. It’s going to be something that I’ll have further discussions on with him and the community members when we provide another list that is scheduled to be submitted to the federal government.
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. Final short supplementary, Mr. Krutko.
Again, Mr. Speaker, I’ve been hearing too little too long. I know that if you don’t get a project on the budget process, you’ll never see the light of day.
So I’d like to ask the Minister: knowing that it is not on this particular budget this time around, can we see it in the next year’s budget, to ensure that we actually see some activity done on the project, which has been around this table since 1991?
