Debates of October 28, 2014 (day 44)

Thank you, committee. Sergeant-at-Arms, if you could please bring the witnesses into the House.

Speaker Jacobson, if you would like to introduce your witnesses to the House, please.

Jackie Jacobson

Nunakput

Thank you, Mr. Chair. To my right I have Mr. Darrin Ouellette, and to my left I have the Clerk of the Assembly, Mr. Tim Mercer.

Thank you, Speaker Jacobson. Mr. Mercer and Mr. Ouellette, welcome to the Chamber again.

Committee, as we agreed upon earlier with convention, we will not do any opening comments. We’ll go directly to general comments. Does committee agree that there are no general comments and we can proceed to detail?

Speaker: SOME HON. MEMBERS

Agreed.

Committee, we will defer page 7 until consideration of activities. Committee, page 8, Legislative Assembly, Office of the Clerk. Mr. Bromley.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just had one question. I see there was quite an increase from our capital estimates last year, I guess, the current year that we’re in, ’14-15, from the figure presented, $329,000 up to almost double, and I’m just wondering if I can get an explanation of what accounts for the increase from $329,000 to $657,000 there.

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Speaker Jacobson.

Jackie Jacobson

Nunakput

Thank you, Mr. Chair. For capital funding for this year, the extra $150,000 is for the accessibility betterments of our building here at the Assembly for access for people with disabilities. It’s in a two-year plan that we’re doing, and the betterments that we’re finishing off this year would make it accessible for the people with disabilities to have full access to the building.

So that difference between the $329,000 and $657,000 was essentially accounted for by the additional commitments to making the building accessible to those with disabilities as I understand it. That’s all I had then.

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. I’ll take that as a comment. Committee, again, page 8, Legislative Assembly, Office of the Clerk, infrastructure investments, $150,000. Does committee agree?

Speaker: SOME HON. MEMBERS

Agreed.

Thank you, committee. If I can get you to turn to page 7, Legislative Assembly, total infrastructure investments, $150,000. Does committee agree?

Speaker: SOME HON. MEMBERS

Agreed.

Does committee agree we have concluded consideration of the Legislative Assembly?

Speaker: SOME HON. MEMBERS

Agreed.

Thank you, committee. I’d like to thank Speaker Jacobson, Mr. Mercer and Mr. Ouellette for joining us today. If I could get the Sergeant-at-Arms to please escort our witnesses out of the Chamber.

Committee, as agreed upon earlier today, we’re going to continue on. We’re going to be doing Supplementary Estimates (Operations Expenditures), No. 2, 2014-2015. This is Tabled Document 155-17(5). With that, we’ll go to the Minister for opening remarks. Minister of Finance, Mr. Miltenberger.

I am here to present Supplementary Estimates (Operations Expenditures), No. 2, 2014-2015. This document outlines an increase of $63.994 million in operations expenditures for the 2014-2015 fiscal year.

The more significant items included in the supplementary estimates are:

$47.4 million for the Department of Environment and Natural Resources related to two special warrants that were approved to address costs of fire suppression during the extreme fire season this summer;

$20 million for the Department of Finance to mitigate the impact of extreme low water conditions on the Snare Hydro System on NWT residents’ power costs; and

$770,000 for Education, Culture and Employment to fund startup costs associated with the implementation of Junior Kindergarten and for incremental costs associated with the implementation of the Education Renewal and Innovation Action

Plan.

I am prepared to review the supplementary estimates document.

Thank you, Minister Miltenberger. Minister Miltenberger, do you have witnesses you’d like to bring into the House?

Yes, I do, Mr. Chair. Thank you.

Thank you, Minister Miltenberger. Sergeant-at-Arms, if you could please escort the witnesses into the House. Before we do that, sorry, does committee agree?

Speaker: SOME HON. MEMBERS

Agreed.

Thank you, committee. Sergeant-at-Arms, if you could please escort the witnesses in.

Minister Miltenberger, if you could introduce your witnesses to the House, please.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have with me Deputy Minister Mike Aumond and the director of the Management Board Secretariat, Olin Lovely. Thank you.

Thank you, Minister Miltenberger. Mr. Lovely and Mr. Aumond, welcome to the House again this evening. With that, we’ll proceed with general comments. Mr. Bouchard.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I guess I just have some concerns and I think most of them have to do with the accelerated activity in the Tuk to Inuvik highway. Oh, this is in operations. Sorry. I thought we were on capital. Sorry. Go ahead.

Thank you, committee. Yes, we are on Operations Expenditures, No. 2. I’ll open the floor again to general comments. I have Mr. Bromley.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I see this supp includes a special warrant, which I appreciate. I think this is an important opportunity, obviously, for us to be commenting on special warrants when they come forward in supps like this. It’s an important opportunity for Members of this House to share their perspectives, and special warrants, as we know, are expenditures that are made on an emergency basis typically almost by definition when it has to be done and we really can’t afford to go through the process of approval at the time, but it does allow a retrospective look at things and public discussion, especially as in this one where we have amounts like $47 million-plus.

I note that there are at least two very significant expenditures that were totally unexpected when we started the year. Obviously, an amazing fire season, very costly and certainly extensive. So we’re dealing with a supp here of $47 million to deal with that, $47.4 million. That’s an unexpected amount, and given that we fight tooth and nail to come up with $15 million or $18 million for new initiatives every year, that does put that $47 million… That’s about three years of special initiatives, new initiative money gone up in smoke.

Then, of course, there’s the $20 million, which we heard about earlier today, the discussion about the complete lack of consultation with Members. Again, an unexpected cost that we should have had input on, but a unilateral decision by Cabinet to do that. Again, significant decision without being in line with our consensus government principles, but an unexpected cost. So now we’re dealing with this supp in this fiscal year or the current fiscal year with $67.4 million of unexpected expenditures. Now, that’s a very significant amount of money at any point in our history, but particularly given our current fiscal status. We’re trying to bump up our borrowing limits wherever we can by hundreds of millions of dollars. The impact of this, of course, will be felt reverberating through the 18th Assembly and this is even before we get to supps on the capital expenditures.

So I guess there’s nothing we can do about forest fires other than deal with climate change to try to get that sort of thing in line. I don’t think we’ve been doing a good job on that front. It does speak to that sort of thing even though we’re here to deal with dollars. What the dollars reflect is whether or not we’re doing a good job on other fronts. With climate change, of course, that reflects on governments around the world. We’re in line in terms of not dealing with it, despite our opportunity to play a real leadership role here. Then, of course, there’s the $20 million without any discussion about how we might mitigate those impacts through wiser expenditures.

I just wanted to note my concerns in case the Minister wasn’t aware of those. I’m sure he was, but I think it’s important for the public that in fact this government is throwing around, really, by the time we’re done here, hundreds of millions of dollars in unexpected costs and this is definitely going to be affecting our fiscal status and the 18th Assembly and so on. I’m not going to be proud walking out the door if I don’t return next term and leave the 18th Assembly with some of the things that I see coming down the pike because of these sorts of decisions.

I’ll leave it at that as general comments. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Minister Miltenberger.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the Member’s concern and his comments. If you look at the whole fiscal picture at the end of this Assembly or where we currently are now, I would say while we have challenges, it’s not as bleak as the Member would indicate and we are doing an enormous amount of very critical things like the $350 million project at Stanton. We’re discussing a $314 million capital plan, which we bumped up $50 million this year. So there are enormous challenges for a government this size, for a territory this large with the demands as many and varied as they are.

This Legislature has managed its way through some very trying and difficult times balancing a lot of priorities, so as we leave this 17th Assembly and for those of us who are coming back or intending on coming back, you want to know that you aren’t going to leave the 18th Assembly hamstrung. I don’t think, at the end of the day, they will be hamstrung. They will have challenges, but every government does. They will have a lot of good things they are going to inherit as well. Thank you.

I appreciate the Minister’s perspective there and I know he has the same perspective as me in the long run. What it also means is we’re giving up the opportunity for services to people and for doing a better job at dealing with the cost of living, et cetera. We have a record for continually going back to big daddy to raise our borrowing limit and so on, and we don’t seem to pay much attention to those. We try to have a $100 million buffer, and that’s starting to disintegrate because of these sorts of decisions and unexpected costs.

The alert, I think, is unexpected costs are becoming an expected part of the routine business that we deal with because of some of these larger problems that we have not been effectively dealing with. That’s an alert that we need to maintain buffers and perhaps should contemplate larger buffers, Given that we have seen in a year like this we can do in those buffers with one season’s events.

I appreciate the Minister’s perspectives. He is our Minister of Finance and I am commenting from the outside, but I am commenting with seven years of trend in mind. I know others might have similar concerns. I will leave it at that, Mr. Chair.

Once again, I appreciate the Member’s comments. I will just accept and thank him for making them. Thank you.

Next I have Ms. Bisaro.

Wendy Bisaro

Frame Lake

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

---Carried

Report of Committee of the Whole

Speaker: MR. SPEAKER

Good evening. Can I have the report of Committee of the Whole, Mr. Bouchard?