Debates of October 14, 2004 (day 20)

Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I’d like to thank the Premier and the Minister for their kind response and I think above all, if anything, I’d just like to say to the government let’s highlight this, let’s move it up on our agenda. Let’s take more of an active approach on addressing our needs.

In my riding alone, I think there’s one particular community that really skews it. It’s actually Fort Liard. Just for that place alone to get all their houses back up to snuff, be it for whatever reason that their houses have been left by the wayside and it hasn’t really been addressed. I always tell people Fort Liard is always left out in the cold just because on the geographic map, they actually are in the corner and people forget about them, but I’m not. I was just talking with some of the housing experts. We’re looking at almost $750,000 for that community alone just to get things back up to square one and address those needs. The Premier himself said in his statement, healthy people need healthy homes. It’s one of the basic necessities in life.

With that, I’d just like to encourage the government to continue. Every time we do sessional statements or produce updates on our vision for this Assembly, we keep moving housing higher and higher to the forefront. I’m proud of the Minister, too, for speaking with the federal Ministers, because I was never very comfortable with CMHC. I think it was over a 10-year period they were going to decline our social programming dollars down to nothing. I still think that we do have a case in saying it’s premature. In fact, we’re not even self-sufficient. I’ll just conclude with that, Madam Chair. Mahsi cho.

Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. I have on the list Mr. Braden and Mr. Yakeleya for general comments. Mr. Braden.

Thank you, Madam Chair. The sessional statement was a very extensive checklist of the initiatives that this Assembly has undertaken. Also, I think it covered a fair number of ongoing programs and projects that carry through from previous assemblies. I guess in this particular message, Madam Chair, I didn’t see any pronouncements or announcements of anything substantively new. Perhaps my expectations were maybe a little out of line in that respect, but it is an opportunity for the government to signal some new things that may be taking place out there or that are in the offing. It’s the kind of thing that I would encourage the Premier and the Cabinet to undertake, especially at the start of a session, as something that gives us a fresh platform and projects a strong and positive and proactive government at work in contrast to, I guess, as I say, Madam Chair, sort of a checklist or a review of essentially what we already know is underway.

Something that is becoming more and more evident in our government and in the kinds of decisions and initiatives that we can undertake is that we have less and less discretion as a territorial government to make strong, forward-looking, innovative moves. The kind of thing that I’m looking at -- and I’ll just give one example, Madam Chair -- would be in the field of advanced educational research. I think that there is a great potential in the North, a great need and a great potential to really advance the areas of science and technology. I would really like to see the NWT, I think as our partners or sister territories of Nunavut and Yukon are going to be doing, jumping on board national and international programs to advance sciences. We have so little discretion in our capital planning. We have so little capacity within our civil service. There is so little capacity at the level of industry to undertake this kind of forward-looking initiative, because we’re working so hard at keeping up with the essentials and the forced needs that we find ourselves dealing with because of all the economic activity that’s going on.

In the last Assembly, Madam Chair, the phrase was coined, “we’re going broke looking after all this prosperity” and it’s true. In the last few weeks we’ve gone through business plans. We’ll see more of that in the coming months as the budget process opens up. We’ve got so little room here to grow this Northwest Territories. I’d like to say from my point of view, I’m becoming more frustrated with the lack of discretion, the lack of opportunity that I see here in this Legislature, as an Assembly, as committee members, as Cabinet, for us to really say this particular project is a good idea, let’s use the sciences one. But do we have the capacity or the room to do anything with it? No, not at all. It’s because we have such more pressing needs looking after the housing, as we just talked about, the transportation, the water and sewer infrastructure, those kinds of things.

I reflect on what seems to be a growing list of things that are out there on maybe a stage or they’re in a regulatory format or perhaps we’re talking about an interim plan to do something. There’s so much going on that’s out of the control of the Northwest Territories, but it impacts us so heavily that we’re in a bottleneck. We’re in a kind of limbo stage here and I just wanted to try and illustrate this from my point of view, Madam Chair, as something that is one of the dynamics that we’re playing with right now. We don’t know if a pipeline is going to go ahead, but, by golly, we better make tens of millions of dollars of investment in training alone to be ready for something that we don’t really know is there. Hydro developments; wonderful legacies of both the mining and oil and gas industries that we just don’t know if we should do it yet because we’re not there yet.

The devolution arrangements that we’ve talked about in the last couple of days; maybe it’s going to be really hard because there are land claims and self-government agreements to get in place first and maybe we should do an interim agreement.

Without going on and on and on, Madam Chair, I wanted to illustrate that we’re in a situation right now as a government where it’s difficult to do more than manage on a month-by-month or maybe a year-by-year basis. It’s hard for this government to look that much further out because so many of these major, major projects are outside of our control. I won’t say they're outside of our influence, we can certainly influence things, but it’s a delicate time right now and kind of a frustrating time from my position here as an MLA.

To be a bit more specific on a couple of things that were mentioned in the Premier’s sessional statement. We have so many forums and avenues for consultation and I really do want to strive to enhance, to grow, to strengthen, to build on the consensus style of government that we have right now. As a matter of fact, maybe Ottawa could be looking at what we’re doing because they are learning with the minority situation they have down there, I think they are learning a little bit about how to try to achieve consensus and keep the place going. But we have the Intergovernmental Forum that was created about four years ago, the Aboriginal Summit not long after that. This spring we created, along with the municipalities and the aboriginal organizations, the Circle of Northern Leaders. So we have an abundance, and perhaps an over abundance, of various consultative and governance and decision-making agencies and avenues. I certainly don’t want to say that I am against these, but to what level do we stop creating all these forums and actually start using them and engaging them in our work and unity that is so critical and so important to us in the next few months and years, Madam Chair, if we are going to really achieve a future for the Northwest Territories that is inclusive and is consensus building, and yet that allows so much diversity to co-exist? Thanks, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Braden. I didn’t hear any questions there. Those, too, were general comments. I have next on the list Mr. Yakeleya.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Probably more or less a few minutes of comments in regard to the sessional statement by the Premier. More of what I am looking at is the vision for our people in the communities, where do they see this government going in five, 10, 15 years, and there are so many things that he highlighted in his sessional statement that I look forward to seeing happen within the lifetime of this government. I’m a little more concerned about the devolution and resource revenue sharing in terms of how it is going to affect the small communities and the self-government agreements and other agreements in our region. One issue that’s really pressing is the housing in our region and to try and change that in this day and age with the conditions we live in in the community. But I think this government really needs to put a lot of money into housing issues. The houses need to be looked at, and any way that the Minister can look at putting these houses and fixing them up and getting them into the communities needs to be explored more.

The other one, Madam Chair, is the health issues in my region. Today I had the opportunity to go to the health clinic and the good doctor said all systems are a go for me. So I’m glad, because in Yellowknife you have a really good health system here. I was in Tulita, in the Sahtu, last week. Our health system is not as good as Yellowknife. You have to wait a long time for nurses and doctors and to receive some care there with specific things. Here it is really good. So I hope that one day the communities can move closer to see the types of services that I received today in Yellowknife. This government needs to really invest a lot into the health care system and into the regions.

So I guess, Madam Chair, I was looking at this sessional statement and, like Mr. Braden says, it’s like a report card and it’s a good report card. I applaud the Ministers and Mr. Premier for doing good work with us in tough times, but I think we are stepping up a notch. We had a good meeting in Ottawa with the First Ministers and we got a good deal. I think that should happen with education, health and other issues that the Northwest Territories needs to take notice. I think we are on our way there. So I guess what I am hoping to see is that something that the people back in the communities can say yes, we’re doing good, this government is doing good.

There’s some hope with the pipeline and we’re taking steps in that direction to see some benefits go into the communities and into the North. I hope that there are steps taken that decisions now will be made by our people. Sometimes we do things for our people up at this level here, and sometimes we need to give that responsibility to them to make their own decisions. The Premier mentioned that in his statement, that there is flexibility in terms of being open to how decisions are made and one region doesn’t necessarily mean it hasn’t been done in other regions. So I think that’s the thing that the regions are looking for.

I just wanted to make those few comments, Madam Chair. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. Any further general comments on Premier Handley’s sessional statement? Mr. Pokiak.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I, too, feel like it was a good sessional statement, but I’d like to keep in mind that there are a lot of hard issues being pressed here with this government. Some of the ideas that came to mind in his statement were regarding the resource revenue sharing. I think it’s very important, Madam Chair, that we continue to really get something done from the federal government in this regard. It is very important for us to continue pursuing that matter. My comments are going to be general in regard to some of the items that came out in his statement.

With regard to housing needs, it’s good to hear the Minister responsible for the Housing Corporation talk about working with industry but, at the same time, if we continue to wait for them to come down here until a pipeline is built, that won’t address the needs of the shortage of housing in the Territories. So we have to work in line with that also.

With regard to MACA and the new deal, I don’t know how it will affect non-tax-based communities, but we have to be careful with that also. In the smaller communities, it is very hard to generate revenue.

Another item that caught my eye was with regard to the highway strategy. It’s good you have $158 million over five years, but again it’s geared towards existing highways. I think somewhere down the road, like I have said in other forums, the Tuk-Inuvik highway can play a really big part with regard to the pipeline.

Regarding self-government, it’s very important we continue pushing on with the aboriginal groups because they do have final agreements in place. They are just pursuing what’s in the agreements they have. It’s important we go through with that. These are just general comments, Madam Chair, that I thought I would bring forward. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Pokiak. Are there any further general comments? Mr. Handley.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I would like to respond to some of the comments that have been made. First of all, I would like to say that I really appreciate the advice and the recommendations, the criticisms and so on, that Members raise in this forum. I know a lot of what we have, for example, in a sessional statement may seem like a report card or may seem like old news. We have to keep in mind, at least from my perspective, that we know because we sit in committees and we talk about many of these things, but often the public is not included and may not be familiar. So when we put together a sessional statement, I try to do it in a way that is aimed at the public, so they will also hear the report card we are putting forward. I must say that in my experience people do appreciate that. In my constituency meetings, they often raise questions about some of these statements that we make. So I hope you will bear with me if it seems to be a bit old news, because I do that intentionally because it’s important to the public to hear what we are doing.

We are in a year in our final quarter before we do the budget and I have always viewed the budget session as the time we would introduce a lot of new initiatives, and this would be the period where we would be reporting on what we have been doing with the appropriations that were voted the previous spring. With advice, I am certainly ready to look at how we can do it differently.

When we put together our strategy as a result of consultations, we did really zero in on very practical kinds of goals. We said good fiscal management was our first strategy, the second one was healthy, well-educated people in our communities, and the third was on well-governed communities. Those are the three strategies that our government has focussed on, because I do certainly agree with Mr. Yakeleya’s statement that we need to make a difference to the people out in the communities and the people who have pretty basic needs. I hear you loud and clear on the housing issue, that that is something we have to pay attention to.

While we do rely, to a large extent, on the federal government for our finances and for assistance on housing, I hope that as a government we can do more with our own resources. A practical example to me is in travelling around the communities I have seen a lot of facilities that are underutilized, and yet we have a housing shortage. What is stopping us? We can always find reasons why we shouldn’t make those available for people to live in, but if they are not being utilized well for the purpose they are presently assigned, then let’s use them for housing if they are appropriate at all. Some of them may not be appropriate, but there are things we can do ourselves here. I appreciate any advice that you have on how we may be able to do things like that that are more creative.

I can think of the seniors’ facility in Tuk as a good example. When I was there, there was something like nine units sitting empty for years, yet we have a housing problem in Tuk. Let’s be creative.

I have been watching a house in Yellowknife that is managed by one of our boards that has been empty since early last spring. A family moved out of it because they took a job somewhere else and it’s owned by one of the boards. It’s been sitting empty. I have no idea why. It’s a house in a nice part of the city, but for some reason it just sits empty. I think there is more we can do ourselves, too. We should look at our own programs and see how we can make better use of the facilities that we have.

On the idea of research and becoming more innovative, I am 100 percent in support of us being able to do that. Last night I had a constituency meeting and one of the constituents who came to the meeting was a medical doctor who came to say he has never seen it better. We had almost a full number of doctors and nurses it the city and it’s the first time he’s seen it. Things are going really well. He was particularly interested in some of the funding we got from the federal government and saying is there a way for us to take some of the money that is made available for aboriginal health and some possibly that’s made available to us and establish a centre of excellence in the Northwest Territories where we would have more northern home-grown research on issues that affect our people. I think it’s a great idea and I offered to work with him and bring it up to the Minister of Health and I have done that already. I look forward to doing that kind of thing. I think there is some room with the money the federal government is putting forward and the attention they are paying to aboriginal issues. Whether it’s diabetes, addictions, child care, there are a whole bunch of areas we could be doing northern research on. There is no end to those areas that we could be doing more research on. There is aboriginal traditional healing. We have done very little yet, but there is a lot of belief and reliance on aboriginal healing and medicines in the North. There are lots of areas. I want to challenge ourselves to do more there.

There are other areas, also. The Minister of Education just reminded me that 2006-07 is International Polar Year and he’s had some discussions with Dr. Fraser, the president of the University of Alberta, about how we can work more closely with the University of Alberta. I have met with Dr. Fraser myself over the last few years and he is very keen on how we can bring university services more to the North, that they are not just places where students go to attend university, but they could also do research in the North. So while we need to deal with the practical issues, there are also opportunities for us to be doing more on leading-edge research.

There is also work being done by the deputy ministers of the three territories about a university of the North. Those are things I hope we can report back to you on and say we have made progress on them.

We do seem to have a lot of forums for consultation, I agree with Mr. Braden. At some point, we may have to collapse some of them or work them together, but I think they have been excellent vehicles to help us get a message to Ottawa and nationally. I don’t begrudge at all the time I spend in meetings or the time I spend trying to build that consensus. As Mr. Braden said, we can probably set a good example for the federal government on how you have to work together in a consensus government and that it can be made to work, because I think we are showing a lot of good success.

I'm very satisfied with the Prime Minister's interest on the North, and the Northwest Territories in particular. I am very appreciative of his receptiveness to issues that we put forward. I am particularly interested in his offer to work with us and with aboriginal organizations, aboriginal governments, to develop a vision for the North, a broad strategy of where we are going. I think that can help to answer the question that Mr. Yakeleya raised of what is the vision, where are we going to be 10, 20, 50 years from now. Where are we heading as a territory? Those can be good discussions and we have made an offer to the Prime Minister and we are ready to participate, to have people sit down with his representatives and begin that exercise of building that vision.

There are some practical things that we have to do, and I appreciate Mr. Pokiak's comments. Resource revenue sharing, I agree, is the most important thing that we have to achieve. We cannot have big, mega projects continue to take resources out of here without a reasonable amount being available for us today, but also being available for future generations. I would like to have some discussion sometime on, for example, a heritage fund. We should be putting money away. We know that non-renewable resources will run out some day and we need to begin now to plan for the future on that. So I'm intrigued by those kinds of projects.

Sometimes we are limited today, but hopefully it will improve. A good example is on the highway money. There is $158 million being spent. As Mr. Pokiak said, it is largely on existing highway systems, but again it's federal money, it's meant to respond to economic activity. I hope to take those kinds of things and build them out into projects that can result in a good highway from Inuvik to Tuk as development happens. A lot of what we want to do is dependent on the pipeline, it's dependent on some more resource development happening; mining, as well. But I think there are lots of opportunities.

I will just close by saying I do appreciate Members' comments on the sessional statement, rather than just giving it and then folding it up and never seeing it again. So I do appreciate the discussion this afternoon. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Handley. Any further general comments? If not, I believe that concludes our discussion on that statement. What is the wish of the committee? Mr. Braden.

Madam Chair, I move that we report progress.

Thank you, Mr. Braden. The motion is in order, it's not debatable. All those in favour of the motion? All those opposed? The motion is carried.

---Carried

Thank you. I will now rise and report progress.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, your committee has been considering Minister's Statement 48-15(3) and would like to report progress. Mr. Speaker, I move that the report of Committee of the Whole be concurred with. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. Is there a seconder? Mr. Krutko.

Question.

Question has been called. All those in favour? All those opposed? The motion is carried.

---Carried

Mr. Speaker, there will be a meeting of the Accountability and Oversight committee tomorrow at 9:00 a.m. and a meeting of the Board of Management tomorrow at 2:30 p.m.

Orders of the day for Friday, October 15th, at 10:00 a.m.:

Prayer

Ministers' Statements

Members' Statements

Returns to Oral Questions

Recognition of Visitors in the Gallery

Oral Questions

Written Questions

Returns to Written Questions

Replies to Opening Address

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

- Motion 15-15(3), Appointment of a Deputy Director

of Human Rights

First Reading of Bills

- Bill 13, Supplementary Appropriation Act, No. 2,

2004-2005

- Bill 14, Supplementary Appropriation Act, No. 4,

2003-2004

Second Reading of Bills

Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters

- Minister's Statement 48-15(3), Sessional Statement

- Minister's Statement 49-15(3), Fiscal Update

- Bill 7, An Act to Amend the Legal Profession Act

- Bill 8, Miscellaneous Statutes Amendment Act,

2004

- Bill 9, Write-off of Assets and Debts Act, 2004-2005

- Bill 10, Forgiveness of Debts Act, 2004-2005

- Bill 12, An Act to Amend the Education Act

Report of Committee of the Whole

Third Reading of Bills

Orders of the Day

Thank you, Mr. Clerk. Accordingly, this House stands adjourned until Friday, October 15, 2004, at 10:00 a.m.

---ADJOURNMENT

The House adjourned at 4:55 p.m.