Mr. Speaker, those individuals who are writing the trades entrance exams, it’s not only the Sahtu region that may have failed their trades entrance. We have to focus on how we can assist those individuals. Let’s come up with a solution. Let’s put our brains together with the departments and the community and also the regions on how can we come up with a solution to have those individuals pass trades entrance exams.
That will be my focus with my department, focusing on the Sahtu region so we can have those individuals pass their trades entrance so they can be prepared for the workforce. Mahsi.
Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Time for oral questions has expired. Item 8, written questions. Item 9, returns to written questions. Item 10, replies to opening address. Item 11, petitions. Item 12, reports of standing and special committees. Item 13, reports of committees on the review of bills. Item 14, tabling of documents. Item 15, notices of motion. Item 16, notices of motion for first reading of bills. Mr. Yakeleya.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I give notice that on Friday, October 31, 2014, I will move that Bill 34, 2015 Polling Day Act, be read for the first time. Mahsi.
Good afternoon, committee. I’d like to call Committee of the Whole to order today. What is the wish of committee? Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. We would like to consider Tabled Document 155-17(5), Supplementary Estimates (Operations Expenditures), No. 2, 2014-2015; and, time permitting, Tabled Document 154-17(5), Supplementary Estimates (Infrastructure Expenditures), No. 4, 2014-2015; and, time permitting, Tabled Document 115-17(5), Northwest Territories Capital Estimates 2015-2016, with the Department of Transportation. Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Does committee agree?
Agreed.
Thank you, committee. We’ll commence with that after a short break.
---SHORT RECESS
I’d like to call Committee of the Whole back to order. We are in the process of reviewing the Tabled Document 155-17(5), Supplementary Estimates (Operations Expenditures), No. 2, 2014-2015. I have Mr. Dolynny under general comments. Sorry, let’s go to the Minister first. Minister Miltenberger, do you have guests to introduce to the House today?
Yes, Mr. Chair. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Does committee agree?
Agreed.
Thank you. I will ask the Sergeant-at-Arms to please escort our guests in today.
Minister Miltenberger, please introduce your witnesses today.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have with me Mike Aumond, deputy minister of Finance; and Mr. Olin Lovely, director of the Management Board Secretariat. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger Committee, we are completing opening comments on Supplementary Estimates (Operations Expenditures), No. 2, 2014-2015. Next on my list I have Mr. Dolynny.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I’d again like to welcome the Minister and the department here today for these general comments on the supplementary appropriation in the area of operations.
I wish to take the opportunity today to talk about two of the line items that we’re going to be discussing here today, the first of which is the fire suppression amount of $47 million. But before I do, I think it’s important that at every opportunity we have the pleasure of again thanking our own fire suppression teams across the Northwest Territories, both ground crew and air, and again to all the visiting jurisdictions that provided the safe haven and blanket of safety during what was one of our worst fire seasons of all time.
We know that the Minister has talked about this in the House, and Members have also brought comment, so I don’t want to belittle or continue down that path, and at a point in time, I might be discussing about this as well. I have to admit that at the beginning of the fire season, Members of the House, and I think the general public at large, received very intermittent communication. Of course, as the fire became more prominent, information became a lot more readily available, so for that I pass my thanks to the department.
However, what was missing, a key component, especially given the volume and the amount of money that was being poured into this endeavour, there was, and has been, no real mechanism put in place since I’ve been here as a Member of the 17th Legislative Assembly. The only mechanism in terms of finding out what the financial impact was as we progressed in this 2014 fire season, was comments made by media or CBC in which that was basically the only mechanism that we had as Members as to how much money this was costing.
I know the Finance Minister was heard saying it was costing us $1 million a day. Again, this is the type of information that we only received through media sources.
So I will challenge the department to take this information as notice in terms of what can we do to improve the communication not so much of where the fires are or geographical location of the fire updates but, more importantly, some form of communication mechanism for not only the Members but maybe to the public in terms of what’s it costing us in real time of fighting these fires, so that when we see these large numbers come before committee that we do have some mitigating circumstances to put reference to. So I’ll leave that one at that, Mr. Chair.
The second one is the second large amount of the appropriations that has come before committee here, is the $20 million of the Northwest Territories Power Corporation to mitigate the low water levy at the Snare. I want to make it quite clear, and I’ve heard this already in some media sources and, of course, in social media, that this was typically a rider and an offset to deal with just Yellowknife ratepayers. I want to make it quite clear that this was not just a Yellowknife ratepayer scenario or solution; this was a solution that affected all ratepayers in the Northwest Territories.
But, Mr. Chair, what I really want to focus on here is a bit of the background to put into context the decision-making process and how this money came about and where we are today in this appropriation.
I could tell you from a chronological point of view, this information was very sparse, at best, with committee, to understand the rationale regarding the decision-making of this appropriation. Very little information was provided to committee. In fact, I’ll attest that almost none or very sparse information was given.
I can tell committee and I can tell the people listening in that it was almost to the same tune of September 26th when both the Minister of Finance and our Premier held a joint news conference, which required, normally, a notice to the Members of the Assembly here of at least a two-hour window of notice. I can assure the committee that I don’t believe that occurred. In fact, we heard for the first time, like members of the public, that there was going to be a decision. That decision, and I’ll quote right from the media, the Premier said, “We have eliminated the need of a rate rider and have ensured the costs have not been passed on to the NWT residents.”
Mr. Chair, I can tell you that there was no heads-up for that decision, there was no notice, there was no memo, no letter, no paper trail, no Caucus discussion. This was just a political maneuver, and I can tell you, Mr. Chair, that I believe this was very cleverly orchestrated to purposely circumvent the convention or the guiding principles of consensus government. It’s so important I need to state what are some of those principals or key terminology and I think, for the record, I will bring them here to the floor of the House.
I’m going to use some of the terminology written within this consensus style of guidelines and principles that we adhere to. Terminology such as, “to work together, of open dialogue, inclusive decision-making, accommodation, respect and trust, open and respectful communication between all Members, the opportunity for all Members to have meaningful input into important decisions is fundamental,” and I think the most important guiding principle, number five, is: “Except under extraordinary circumstances, Members of the Legislative Assembly should be made aware of and have opportunity to discuss significant announcements, changes, consultations or initiatives before they are released to the public or introduced in the Legislative Assembly. Use of the element of surprise is inconsistent with consensus government.”
We know that this appropriation that we have before us did not qualify under the terms of a special warrant, so we do ask, by what tool, what FAM policy, what financial administration act, law or regulation was used to make this decision. I can tell you, Mr. Chair, there was nothing. There was nothing to support this action, and there was nothing from preventing this Cabinet from doing this or repeating this same action. I can tell you, Mr. Chair, that the precedent that is being set today by this Cabinet is not being discussed before the House.
To complicate things, it appears that the appropriation is truly only roughly about $15 million for this year and that we are actually making an appropriation amount, from what we can see here, of $5 million from next year’s budget, which for me is problematic. Why are we talking about a $20 million appropriation in this fiscal year and already taking from a future budget year? This clearly could be added to next year’s budget operations procedure, and it clearly circumvents the process by doing it in this year, and it’s very unclear and I’ll seek some rationale as to why.
So, Mr. Chair, I know that it’s almost impossible to speak against this in its principle because I believe it is still the right thing to do, but it was cleverly done to mitigate the process of convention style of consensus government. Clearly, as I see it and I think many see it, this was to prop up the stock value of this Cabinet and this government, and I think the public sees that as well.
The Premier prides himself on being a great communicator, and I think he is a great communicator. He is a person who likes to collaborate with all community governments and has shown his accolades in closing the devolution file is a testament to that compliment. But yet it’s apparent that this noble gesture seems to stop at the door of this Assembly, and I feel that Members of the House, because of this scenario, are not part of this Cabinet and this Premier’s master plan, and I think this has to be brought up to the attention of all.
Mr. Chair, in the end, although ratepayers, as I said, did benefit from this hasty and non-transparent decision and circumvented the consensus government, I’m hoping that through this dialogue, through this sharing of information and of my opinion and my concern, that we have not struck an awful chord within the consensus style government because clearly, by way of action, this did occur. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. Minister Miltenberger.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. In regards to the first issue raised by the Member, we provide weekly updates to MLAs during fire season and we will add a financial component to that to allow Members to track, as do we, the costs and expenditures during fire season.
In regard to the second issue, I want to, of course, concur with the Member that Northerners have reacted very favourably to the $20 million that was used to offset the proposed rate increase, and the reason that we did $20 million - $15 for the rest of this fiscal year, $5 million to carry us over to June – is because we had to give the Public Utilities Board confirmation that we would make NTPC whole for the whole amount, for the entire amount that they were requesting, which was $20 million to cover the fuel charges that were going to be incurred from this month or last month to right through until June, so we did that.
The Member says it was a hasty, ill-thought-out, quick response, cleverly manufactured to circumvent the rules of consensus government, and I would suggest that in fact it was a timely thought out, measured, but very focused and nimble response to a circumstance that came before us that was going to cause extreme hardship, we figured. We were well aware of the concern that we all have about cost of living and this would have been a prime contributor to that.
Sometimes in these kinds of circumstances government is required to act quickly, and we did. We acted quickly. We met the balance not to the satisfaction to the length of time that the Members would have, but I believe we met our commitments that we needed to under the convention for consensus government, and more importantly, we responded in a timely and effective way to a situation that required a timely and effective response. It wasn’t an attempt to circumvent consensus government but rather an attempt to deal with a circumstance that required what we thought was immediate attention, and as a government we responded accordingly.
Thank you, Minister Miltenberger. Committee, we’re on Tabled Document 155-17(5), Supplementary Estimates (Operations Expenditures), No. 2, 2014-2015, and we’re on general comments. Next I have Mr. Moses.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just a few general comments in regard to this operations expenditures supplementary appropriation. First off, I understand the amount of money that we’re putting into the special warrant for the extreme fire season that we did have. Speaking to some of my former colleagues in the industry, they mentioned that we’re going to see an even drier summer next year and maybe even a more extreme fire season, and want to know what the Minister and government is doing in terms of looking to address that issue. That being said, we can look at possibly another low water condition at the Snare Hydro System, which we, again, put $20 million towards, so that’s $67 million that this government didn’t budget for, but we’re taking the costs on that. Moving forward and looking at the change in weather and the amount of water and precipitation that we get, I just want to give a heads-up that we’re going to be seeing these kinds of costs in the future, I think, and how do we address those. What’s the department doing to put things in place to mitigate these costs and mitigate the damage that it’s doing to the environment and the Northwest Territories?
Like my colleague, the $20 million was communicated very, very poorly, and I understand that it was a timely matter, a decision matter, and it was done one day and an announcement was made the next. I mean, it could have possibly been held off over the weekend or something and information given to Members rather than the element of surprise that a lot of us experienced through the night, I guess, and hearing it the next day, but I’m sure there’s a lot of residents who are happy that the government took that approach to offset the high cost of living that we see in the Northwest Territories. I know residents of Inuvik were pretty happy that the government did step up to the plate. But it does come down to a communication issue with the Regular Members and how we pass information back and forth with Cabinet. We’ve heard a lot of discussion on those two big items.
The other item that’s on here is the amount of dollars that are being allocated for the implementation of Junior Kindergarten, which has been a big, hot topic this week in question period. With that, what I want to say is committee and some Members on this side of the House brought forward a motion back on February 27th, I think, to try to get dollars for the implementation of Junior Kindergarten and that whole early childhood initiative. The Minister, actually all Ministers stood up in a recorded vote and defeated the motion, which just begs for me to say whether or not Cabinet does really take some of what we’re trying to do seriously. We read the full reports, we did our consultations with our constituents back home, with people that are going to be affected by Junior Kindergarten, and we did try to support the program. We tried to support not the delay of Junior Kindergarten but we wanted to make sure that it was implemented right, that everybody was in place to get it started. As you can see with the questions and Members’ statements this week, 23 communities have it implemented and actually now we’re having the government come back to committee saying, yes, we do need that money. Why didn’t they listen to us the first time?
We are trying to support, and I know that going forward I’ll support this supplementary appropriation because of the people that are going to be doing the programs. The kindergarten teachers are going to need that extra help and the schools are going to need extra help. In fact, we are putting Junior Kindergarten into communities that don’t even have the space and I think we’re going to be looking at another supplementary appropriation for renovations. They don’t even have bathroom facilities and we’re going to have to address those. It just concerns me that when we try to help out governments and we get a failed system and it’s not like, I told you so kind of attitude, but we knew it was going to come down. We knew that when the Junior Kindergarten was getting implemented that there was going to be dollars needed. You’re hearing that loud and clear now from the education authorities; you’re hearing it from the teachers; you’re hearing it from even the private daycares.
Not much else to say but we knew we were going to see some money here for that Junior Kindergarten program and it’s just disappointing that Cabinet actually stood up in a recorded vote and defeated a motion that we were trying to assist in a worthy program back in the February 27th motion, or the motion for the dollars that we were trying to allocate for the Junior Kindergarten. I can look it up if some of the Members want to see it. I just wanted to point that out there and get that on the record, because the Members on this side do listen and we do try to offer advice and support and try to get things implemented in a timely manner, but in a more efficient manner as well.
Just some opening comments to the operations.
Thank you, Mr. Moses. Minister Miltenberger.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the Member’s concern. As the Member is going to be tracking and worrying about the upcoming snowfall and winter and then the coming summer, so too are all of us as we look at the level of drought and what kind of water we can expect this coming spring and summer and hope for the water levels to go up to have a wetter season in the southern part of the territory. There’s little in the short-term we can do to mitigate that, but clearly, as we look longer term at climate change, global warming, we have to continue to strive to do our part to look at mitigating over the longer term.
In regard to the concern of whether we take the MLAs seriously and the concern of the MLAs, I would say absolutely that we have probably the most, I would say the most conclusive government and Legislature in Canada where we have all the MLAs – there’s no party distinctions – have critical roles to play in the budget process, legislative process that involves everybody. The budgeting process, in actual fact, never stops. It’s constantly underway. As one budget is concluded another one starts. We all have legislation that we’re all working on, doing our different parts, and with a consensus government we are very, very open and transparent. We, as a government, sometimes have to act on certain things, but for the most part everything we do is there to be scrutinized and we respond to that.
I appreciate the Member’s comments about the money in the supp for Junior Kindergarten. My only comment would be that the funds finally did make it. Some of the monies identified for Junior Kindergarten, maybe it’s a case of better late than never. As the Member said, it’s not so much a case of I told you so, but rather through the due process of making sure that the funds get to where they’re needed. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister Miltenberger. General comments on Supplementary Estimates (Operations Expenditures), No. 2, 2014-2015. Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have a few comments and then I’ll have some questions when we get to detail as well.
My concerns are very similar to those of my colleagues. We have two very large expenditures in this operations supp. Both of them were unexpected and were unplanned, and that happens, particularly with the forest fire expenditures, fire suppression expenditures, the special warrants that had to come through. Absolutely, that needed to be done and I’m glad that the government acted on those.
I do have very large concerns with advancing the payments on the Inuvik-Tuk highway, the $20 million that’s there for that particular project. Sorry, $20 million for NTPC, right. I’m as confused as Mr. Bouchard.
I still have a concern about the $20 million, big time. We always establish a reserve for both infrastructure and for operations and we did prior to this supplementary appropriation. Coming forward we did have, I think, some $26 million in our supplementary reserves for operations, but with this particular supp it’s going to put us in the hole big time. It’s going to put us in the hole $42 million. Admittedly, as I said earlier, some expenditures are unexpected, but I really wonder what that is going to do with not necessarily our finances but with our fiscal position. We have a cash position, which is carefully monitored by Finance and I believe they do a good job and they certainly are concerned about where our cash sits and what we’re borrowing, et cetera. But we’re obviously going to have to borrow to deal with these two expenditures and how much are we going to have borrow. What’s the cost of that borrowing? How is it going to impact our borrowing limit? How is it going to impact our borrowing authorization limit? These are all questions which need to be answered, and I think they’re legitimate questions which I have and I think the public has. We seem to be able to pull money out of the air and it doesn’t seem to be a problem. I think it’s our job, as legislators, to ask where this money is coming from and how much it’s going to cost us.
It’s been mentioned a number of times now, but I have to also speak to the issue of the timing and the way that we were advised of the decision to spend $20 million to lower the cost of power for all residents in the NWT. The Minister is using our concern with the way we were advised, to suggest that we don’t want to be relieved of the extra cost of power. Absolutely I do and I know my constituents do, but we do have protocols and conventions as part of our consensus government, and consensus to me means working together and I certainly didn’t feel that there was any working together on this particular issue.
Both the Premier and the Minister have stated in the last couple of days that we were advised. I think the Premier suggested that we were advised up to two weeks earlier. We were advised that Cabinet was looking at ways to mitigate the $20 million. That goes nowhere near where we’re going to spend $20 million on the NTPC shortfall. My recollection is that we were advised, I guess somewhat haphazardly, that this issue was going before Cabinet on one day and the next day we saw a media advisory, which said that the Premier and the Minister of Finance are going to meet with the media and they’re going to explain our decision to spend $20 million on the NTPC shortfall. There was no opportunity for us, as Regular Members, to have input into this decision. Not to say that we would have complained, but really, where is the opportunity for us to have input? It was not there.
It would have been a simple matter, in my mind, after Cabinet made the decision, the day before the media advisory announcement, it would have been a simple matter for an e-mail to be sent to Regular Members saying this was a decision at Cabinet and we’re letting you know this is what’s been decided.
So now we have an option. We could, as Regular Members, say well, we had no input into this $20 million expense. So maybe we should delete it from this budget, which we have the power to do. There’s absolutely no way that that’s going to make us out to look like anything except the total bad guy. Again, this was a good decision, but we were not able to have any hand in the decision as Regular Members. For me it calls into question the priority that Cabinet places on both consensus government and on the protocols that we have that govern the relationship that we have and the way we communicate back and forth between Cabinet, the executive and Regular Members.
So that’s it for my general comments. I will have some questions when we get to detail. Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Minister Miltenberger.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the Member’s assessment, her bottom line assessment that at the end of the day it was a good decision to put the $20 million to offset the rates. The intent was not to make Members look bad. The intent was to deal with a pressing issue that was going to put all of our constituents under needless or extra financial burden at a time when we’re all struggling with how do we deal with the cost of living. We do place great value on protocols. We spend an enormous amount of time when we do business on process, making sure we’ve touched every base that needs to be touched as it relates to the protocols in terms of informing folks, sending stuff to committee that we’re doing so that they at least have the information and can decide if they want a briefing, offering a briefing and doing the briefings, the correspondence.
But there are times during the daily affairs of government where there’s a deemed requirement to move fast and in this case we did that. I hear clearly that we didn’t touch enough bases or as fully and thoroughly as we should have in the minds of the MLAs and we accept that criticism. On a go forward basis, we’ll of course try to keep the high standard that we do most of the time throughout and we’ll answer the questions that the Member has.
She listed a whole number of things in terms of interest and all those type of things. I’m assuming she was using those as examples and will raise them when we get to that specific item. If not, I apologize and I will do my best to try to respond to those. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Committee, we are on general comments of the Supplementary Estimates (Operations Expenditures). No. 2, 2014-2015. Sorry. You’re not out of time, Ms. Bisaro. I apologize. We will go back to Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I had two minutes left. I just wanted to say that I appreciate the government’s intent, but somebody dropped the ball and I appreciate that the Minister has suggested that yes, maybe they did. I do appreciate also that there are times when decisions need to be made quickly, but I still believe that there is still an opportunity, even when a decision is made quickly, to let Regular Members know what that decision has been.
As to his question about my questions, yes, I will raise them later on. Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. I will take that as a comment. Maybe, Minister Miltenberger, do you have a comment?
Thank you, Mr. Chair. We will wait and respond to the Member’s questions as best we can when she raises them when we get to detail. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Ms. Bisaro, are you done?
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Even though I have 45 seconds, I’m done. Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Committee, we’re on general comments on Supplementary Estimates (Operations Expenditures) No. 2, 2014-2015. General comments.
Detail.
Committee has agreed to go to detail?
Agreed.
Committee, we are on Tabled Document 155-17(5), Supplementary Estimates (Operations Expenditures), No. 2, 2014-2015. We will go to page 3. Supplementary Estimates (Operations Expenditures) No. 2, 2014-2015, Department of Executive, operations expenditures, directorate, previously not authorized, negative $4.206 million.
Agreed.
Total department, not previously authorized, negative $4.206 million. Agreed?
Agreed.
Committee, Department of Human Resources, operations expenditures, directorate, not previously authorized, $23,000.
Agreed.
Total department, previously not authorized, $23,000. Agreed?
Agreed.
Department of Finance, operations expenditures, deputy minister’s office, not previously authorized, $20.037 million. Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I enjoy the consistency across the years.
So, $20 million, $20.037 million, we have had some discussion on this, I think, but I just want to note that this sort of expenditure and this specific one is totally consistent with the impacts of climate change. It’s a consequence of the extreme weather events that are happening globally with increasing frequency and severity. The NWT doesn’t have any special dispensation, so these sorts of things we can expect again with increasing frequency and severity and we need to be able to plan for them.
Scientists have warned about this for decades and Canada and our Prime Minister are now globally recognized for their costly and deadly failure to react responsibly. This $20 million cost that is coming out of our peoples’ pockets today is just the most recent example of the direct cost to the people of the NWT and to the environment of climate change. If we want to go even more recently, we can go to the people of Tuk and talk about the failure of the barges to make it down the Mackenzie River with the freight and what that’s going to cost to complete that transportation project.
Although the Minister says that this was done to protect ratepayers, in fact, costs come out of our citizens’ pockets. This $20 million comes out of our citizens’ pockets one way or another, one pocket or another, either as ratepayers or as taxpayers and it affects services that we are able to provide and our long-term financial health.
This expenditure does nothing, absolutely nothing - $20 million more than – absolutely nothing to address the problem, the underlying issue of the high cost of power, but $20 million spent in a different way very well could have. That, I think, is the issue we’re talking about.
I disagree, and Cabinet can go and make this decision and send us an e-mail to let us know that they made this decision. That is not satisfactory.
Such unilateral decision-making is not only arrogant and an example of short-term thinking, it misses the opportunity supposedly assured by consensus government for all of us in this House to put our minds together to work out the best possible solution to an issue and come up with the most effective use of the relatively scarce dollars that we are dealing with. That’s what this is about.
Mr. Bouchard, Ms. Bisaro apologized for referring to some of the infrastructure stuff. Do not. I would suggest do not do that, because it’s related. It’s coming out of the same piggybank, as we will hear later.
These climate change impact costs are mounting. When combined with other, perhaps, fuel-based decisions involving $60 million, in addition to this $20 million, in addition to another $50 million that we will be talking about later today, even my math tells me that’s way over $100 million. We are struggling to maintain a cushion in our debt limit of $100 million. This is hugely significant to the programs we are able to put into place for our people and the future services we provide and the financial health and options that we will be leaving behind for the 18th Assembly.
I’m not interested in any remarks from the Minister on this, but I’m going to leave him time, if he wishes, and this is a foregone conclusion. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Thank you for those comments. Mr. Miltenberger, would you like to respond?
