Debates of November 29, 2007 (day 5)

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I won’t take up too much more time. I just wanted to say I really enjoyed listening to my colleagues speak about the sessional statement and what their priorities are for this government and the coming four years. There are a few other issues that I just wanted to touch on that I believe this government has to pay attention to. The first one is the migrant worker issue. We’ve got over 3,000 migrant workers in the Northwest Territories that take with them over $300 million out of our territory every year, annually, and $300 million is a lot of money that circulated locally in our local economy would go a long way. I don’t think it can be underestimated the importance of trying to get people to move here, to live here and to stay here in the Northwest Territories. We can’t afford to have 3,000 migrant workers, especially when we still have pockets of high unemployment in some of our smaller communities. Any agreements that are signed in the future for resource development projects have to include a tiered approach so that if they don’t have any employees from the area that the diamond mine or the resource extraction is taking place, such as the North Slave region, they would go to the Mackenzie Delta and they would find some people there who wanted to work before they went down to Edmonton, Saskatoon or wherever looking for employees; Newfoundland, for that matter. I believe we have to put our people to work here first. If companies are doing business in the Northwest Territories, our people should be front and centre and should be getting jobs and they shouldn’t be flying people in and flying people out and taking money out of our territory. It’s bad enough that we don’t get any resource royalties from the federal government, but when the jobs and the money also leave, it’s a double whammy for us. It begs a question of how real is our economy anyway.

When you look at some of the big contracts that are signed with joint venture arrangements with northern companies, they sign these big contracts with southern firms that have the expertise and the manpower, they come in and do the work with their manpower and pay a small percentage to the northern joint venture company, five percent, six percent. It’s just a paper transaction. It doesn’t mean there are any more jobs for northerners. I think that’s a key area that this government needs to focus on: how to get people to move here. If it’s through taxation, I will be the first to say I am not a big fan of taxation, but if we’ve got 3,000 migrant workers out there taking $300 million annually out of this territory. Taxation might be the answer, Mr. Chairman.

I also wanted to mention that, to me, the environment certainly is front and centre. We certainly need to look at ways and means to protect our environment. We also need to come up with a balanced approach in doing that because we also need opportunities for our people. We need that sustainable development. We need opportunities for people. We need to protect the environment, as well.

I also believe that we need to work with other governments, aboriginal governments across our territory. During the life of the last government, there was just a little bit too much infighting. We all didn’t get along. It’s too small of a territory with too much at risk for us not to get along with one another and to try to sing off the same song sheet when it comes to dealing with the federal government. So we need to really be leaders and get out there and work with the other governments in our own territory and have a united voice with the federal government.

In closing, there is one other thing that I wanted to mention. The last government again started out with the agencies and board review. They got to a certain point -- there is 112 of them in the territory -- where decisions had to be made, didn’t want to make them, put the review on the shelf, collected dust. Let’s get out the duster, get that thing off the shelves and let’s make some decisions on boards and agencies. It’s costing us a tremendous amount of money. Let’s do that. That should be one of the first orders of business. We shouldn’t even need to wait for a strategic plan or visit to dust that off and get to work on doing some work there. That was some of the best work that I saw when I was here the last four years, was the work that was done on the agencies and boards review. It was thorough and well done. There were some good recommendations in there and we needed to start making decisions and we didn’t have the guts last time to do it. Let’s get out and do it, Mr. Chairman.

Again, thanks to all the other Members with their comments and it is going to be an exciting four years and I am looking forward to being part of it. Thank you.

---Applause

Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Member for Weledeh, Mr. Bromley.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I really will be brief. Just kidding. I appreciated those points that Mr. Ramsay raised and I also have questions about those migrant workers. I can’t understand our growing the economy when we can’t already have people to serve coffee in a coffee shop.

I just wanted to briefly say one additional thing. Ms. Bisaro mentioned the rate of violence we are dealing with in the North. By far the vast majority of that is violence against women. I think really a prevention way of dealing with that that we need to get more active on is gender-based analysis. I would like to see us include that as part of the social sieve or lens that we put through things. I find that women do add a real valuable perspective on just about everything and, of course, they have different experiences to bring and often some real frontline experience, as well.

I just wanted to add that one note. Thank you very much.

---Applause

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Sessional statement. With that, I will allow the Premier to respond to comments. Mr. Premier, Mr. Roland.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I thank the Members for making their comments on this. A number of comments saying they would liked to have seen more to this. Purposely it was as it was because we have yet to complete the work of the 16th Assembly and in the spirit of working together, I felt, and my Cabinet colleagues felt, it wouldn’t be appropriate if we started to say this is where we think we need to go. We do realize there are 11 votes on the other side of the floor that has a significant impact on us in the decision-making we make. We are 19 Members of the 16th Legislative Assembly and our work in the next four years will dictate what our children and grandchildren will have to look forward to in the Northwest Territories. Many good points raised. Many initiatives that are worthwhile and should have attention put to them. A number of good things have been said. For example, Mr. Beaulieu talked about targeting. We need to focus our expenditures in a number of areas and he used youth as an area. We’ve heard about effective and efficient government. We’ve heard about zero-based review or program review. We’ve also looked at taking a common sense approach to the decision-making we will make. The old adage if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it. The other comment is a major infrastructure problem that is brewing. That is more true than a lot of Members are aware of. Mr. Bromley raised a number of issues in looking at the decision we make and the question of how can we have the greatest impact of four years and beyond. I think that is going to be quite a shift for a government to look beyond its four-year mandate and look to the decisions it makes and how it impacts on our children and our grandchildren.

So there are a lot of areas to do. Mrs. Groenewegen mentioned taking one step at a time. I agree. We have an opportunity, and another point she mentioned is an opportunity to effect change. If we are really truly going to effect change in government, it is not by a shotgun approach to the issues we are going to have before us. We, as an Assembly, I believe if we are going to make directional change in how the government looks and how it delivers on programs, we are going to have to pick a number of specific areas, focussed areas and focus our attention and achieve on those areas, achieve a measurable increase in the level of service or delivery of a program or the results that we have. Once we achieve those, then we can shift and go through a next set of priorities. But I have also been part of governments who have come in with a very broad agenda and trying to be everything to everybody. When you talk about investing in the people of the Northwest Territories, to try to see what we have actually done, that is one of the reasons I believe why it did take so long to measure results within a government. I, too, when I first got into this role as a Member of the Legislative Assembly, came down here, as I told people in my constituency, coming down with fire in my belly and I am going to make some changes. I was disappointed to see how long it took government to change. It still takes a long time to change things, but with the work of 19 Members and some focussed attention, we can start to make a significant difference in how we see things change for the people we represent in the Northwest Territories. We are going to have to be focussed. We are going to have to make some difficult choices. What areas do we want to see as a priority? Then we are going to have to agree. Those other areas that aren’t as high a priority are going to have to take second tier, in a sense, in some of that decision-making or the available dollars we would have to us.

We have made changes in the past. Governments have reacted in the past to the fiscal pressures they faced, so an easy task, for example, would be for us to say if we are having challenges, let’s just set a target of four percent. We hear that number of forced growth. Or, for example, the first budget of the 15th Assembly, it was a target reduction that all departments had to go and meet a specific target reduction. That is the easy way to do business, because departments can go back into their systems and their silos, as Members have talked about from time to time, and make changes to their existing programming. If we are going to affect change, we are going to have to look at how we deal with things. Youth is not just a Municipal and Community Affairs and sports issue. It is not just an Education, Culture and Employment issue. We see youth in our education systems and our justice systems and our health and social service systems and in the sporting area. It is going to have to be an approach that we take. We are going to have to set that direction about how we approach it across the table, not just one Minister and one department, but a number of Ministers and a number of departments to start to make some significant change. That is the type of government I would like to be a part of. I hope that is the type of government Members would like to be a part of. So when we sit down to finalize our plan, our footprint, our handprint in the Government of the Northwest Territories 16th Assembly and affect change, we do have an opportunity. It is an exciting time. We can make a difference. We can make some changes happen sooner rather than later. But it will depend on the choices we have. There is a need for us to speak with one voice in the North, one voice from aboriginal governments, community governments, territorial governments and the message we send. There has to be some recognition from all parties that we can sit, and I picture this and I try to use visual things.

When we talk about devolution and resource revenue sharing, it used to be termed in the 12th Assembly, I believe, as the Northern Accord. It has since turned to devolution and resource revenue sharing. Can we say, as the past governments, and are we as willing, as the 16th Assembly, to sit there and continue to have discussion and not move forward when we know the pressures we are under to try to deliver programs and services in our communities? I would say that we have an opportunity to make a change, but we can’t keep on trying to push the same old truck out of the ditch that all we have been able to do…If you have been stuck in a ditch in the Northwest Territories in the wintertime and you don’t have a tow truck to pull you out and you are pushing up a hill, you tend to spin your tires and weave a little bit sideways along the edge of the ditch without really getting out onto the road. That has been our problem. We need to get out of the ditch and onto the road so we can make some progress. Some good roads, yes.

---Laughter

Building a solid foundation for the future should be our goal, not about what will happen at the end of four years. If we do our job right, the four years will take care of themselves, and the people will recognize us for those decisions that we make.

I look forward to working with Members in the next number of days when we sit down and finalize our goals as the 19 Members of the 16th Legislative Assembly where we can go and steer the ship and where we can make a difference. I want to be a part of that team. I hope we can work together in delivering that. I also realize there are going to be some times when we make those tough choices. You are going to ask the tough questions about why we did this. Is this the best way to do it? Sometimes we are all going to have to accept the lesser of two evils may be the best choice. That would be the difficult time. It is going to be the political will around this House that is going to make a difference. If we don’t have that political will, I will guarantee you, we will be talking about the same issues at the end of our term as we start talking about at the beginning of our term. So the political will, we have that authority as I have heard Members. I agree. We do have that ability, but it will take working together and that is not as easy as said, but I am willing to be a part of that decision-making process of building a better Northwest Territories for our children and their grandchildren. Thank you very much.

---Applause

Sessional statement. Mrs. Groenewegen.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. We are going to save our questions until after our comments, so we have a cast of thousands of questions over here. Just kidding. That is what we decided to do. I am not sure if Members have any questions or not. There is one question I do have. I would just like to ask the Premier -- I probably should have asked this on the day you ran for Premier and not today; it is a bit late now -- I hope there is going to be a real culture of working together. You talk about change. There is one thing that is very quickly within our ability as 19 Members to change here. I really hope that we are going to have an atmosphere of working together in this Assembly. I know that we can’t sit here and ask for things that are unreasonable and expect that the Cabinet side is going to respond favourably to everything we ask. If we ask for things that are completely not within reach, but at the same time it is very frustrating on this side of the House if we feel like we just get kind of thoughtless answers, just kind of standard pat, party line answers. That is very frustrating for us.

The way I would like to see us all here together is we have just given you extra work. You are just like us. We are all equal, but we have entrusted you with some extra responsibilities and you have agreed to take that on. But that is the only difference between us. We have a job to do on this side of the House. You have a job to do over there, and we have entrusted you with more work, more decision-making and just a different level of responsibility. I hope that we can work together just kind of keeping it in that context because, otherwise, we can be kind of frustrated.

I have already noticed, just in the two months we have been here and the folks we have elected to Cabinet, I have already noticed styles emerging. It is refreshing in some instances, I will say already, to see responsiveness and to see the creative thinking and the demeanor of Ministers in this government. I hope that is something that we can continue going forward.

Having said that, Mr. Chair, I have no idea if the Members have questions or not, but I guess it is open to them if they do. Thank you.

Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. Are there any other comments or questions in regards to the sessional statement? Mr. Bromley.

I would just like to hear the Premier say the word environment, if I could.

---Laughter

That is all I ask, Mr. Chair. I don’t think I ever heard it. I would just like to hear it.

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. With that, Mr. Premier, could you bring music to the ears of Mr. Bromley by way of saying...

---Laughter

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I don’t have a musical note in my body. I don’t know if it will sound like music, but, as I said in the sessional statement, the environment will play a huge role in the Northwest Territories in how we proceed, whether it is the environment in this Assembly, our people, our children, the land, the water. Like I said in my speech when I sought this position, my father walked this land; he lived on this land; it provided for him and he is now part of this land. I intend to be a part of this land as well as raising my family, so we do need a healthy environment to do that.

If there are any other questions, I would say hopefully Members will give us a chance once we set the direction of the Assembly and they task us with coming up with a way we are going to fit it into the strategies, into the goals of implementing the priorities, that is when we will better give you thorough responses to the issues that will come before us. So, again, I would like to thank Members for their words and advice and look forward to working together to make this place a better place for our children. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Premier. Mr. Bromley.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I thought our Premier said he wasn’t musical. I never heard such music. Thank you.

---Laughter

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Are there any other comments or questions in regards to the sessional statement? If not, does the committee agree that…Mrs. Groenewegen.

I’m sorry. You were going to ask if we consider this matter concluded first. Sorry. Yes. I just wanted to make a motion to report progress, but you finish what you were doing. Thank you.

Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. With that, does the committee agree that the Sessional Statement 1-16(1) has been concluded?

Agreed.

Thank you, committee. What is the wish of the committee? Mrs. Groenewegen.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I move that we report progress.

The motion is on the floor. The motion is not debatable. All those in favour of reporting progress? All those against? The motion is carried.

---Carried

With that, I will rise and report progress.

Mr. Speaker, the committee has been considering Minister’s Statement 1-16(1), Sessional Statement, and would like to report that consideration of Minister’s Statement 1-16(1) is concluded. Mr. Speaker, I move that the report of Committee of the Whole be concurred with.

Thank you, Mr. Krutko. Is there a seconder? The honourable Member for Nahendeh, Mr. Menicoche. Motion is on the floor. Motion is in order. All those in favour? All those opposed? The motion is carried.

---Carried

Orders of the day for Friday, November 30, 2007, at 10:00 a.m.:

Prayer

Ministers' Statements

Members' Statements

Returns to Oral Questions

Recognition of Visitors in the Gallery

Acknowledgements

Oral Questions

Written Questions

Returns to Written Questions

Petitions

Reports of Standing and Special Committees

Reports of Committees on the Review of Bills

Tabling of Documents

Notices of Motion

Notices of Motion for First Reading of Bills

Motions

First Reading of Bills

Second Reading of Bills

Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters

Report of Committee of the Whole

Third Reading of Bills

23.

Prorogation

---Applause

Thank you, Madam Clerk. Accordingly, this House stands adjourned until Friday, November 30, 2007, at 10:00 a.m.

---ADJOURNMENT

The House adjourned at 17:25.