Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to ask a question to the Minister of Finance. On page 11 of the budget address in the fourth paragraph the Minister talks about the fiscal sustainability, meaning that growth in the total operations and maintenance budget, including compensation and benefits paid to employees, must not exceed our revenue growth.
I want to ask the Minister if he could explain to the House what ideas or what things can be considered to not exceed the benefits and compensation to our employees due to the lack of our growth in revenue.
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. The Minister of Finance, Mr. Miltenberger.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Clearly, one of the biggest single costs in the government is in fact what we pay for our staff of over 5,000 employees, so having affordable compensation packages are going to be critical on a go-forward basis. As well, we have to clearly collectively look at the vacancy rates and then, by extension, as we’ve talked about but very rarely, move in a comprehensive way. Look if we have to make choices as part of programs and services and what’s critical and more of a priority to us, and if there needs to be some retrenching of our mandate, what would that be. Those are the areas that would be included. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, I would ask the Minister of Finance, given the situation in which we may be in on a going-forward basis, does that mean everything is on the table with regards to the number of employees we have, compensation and benefits and programs and services that we’re going to deliver and sustain in our communities and that it might mean that we’re going to have to freeze or pause on our hiring with our employees in the Northwest Territories?
Yes, if we’re going to do this in an even-handed, comprehensive way, all things will be on the table. We need to look at all solutions and how creative we can be. Things that the Member has touched on would be some of those factors to be considered. We can leave no stone unturned as we look at fiscal sustainability and, at the same time, honouring our commitment to protect the programs and services.
We have to come to a hard decision about limits to growth, how big a civil service can we afford. Even though we’ve had restraint, every budget, including this one, has some positions in it. Every MLA, myself included, pushes hard to get government jobs in our communities and in our constituencies, which is all well and good through decentralization and those things. Every Member has asked, even though they know what our budget constraints are.
We need health centres, housing. You name the issue; we need those kinds of investments. So this is not a task for the faint of heart, but it is one that we’ll have to apply ourselves to. Thank you.
I think the Finance Minister has clearly laid it out on page 11 and he has had some discussions with us, and those are the choices that the Finance Minister has written about, the difficult choices that the Assembly will have to make.
I want to ask the Minister, given this reality, when will this exercise start to happen or we’ll start to see some beginning of what we have to start making decisions about?
Mr. Speaker, this process is started. We’ve been using passive restraint and fiscal prudence discipline. We’ve been working on that. Things have changed in southern jurisdictions that have affected our formula, the original escalator in terms of the money they spend, and other things that are dragging down our formula overall. Our own-source revenues are growing at about 3.7 percent. They’re projected to continue to grow. But when you look at some of the fiscal problems down south with the larger provinces, other provinces where they have severe challenges with their own budgets and debt and balancing their books as well as what the federal government is doing, it means we’ve been on this for a while.
So it starts now. I mentioned to the press this morning, we already have in Fort Smith the local housing folks on strike. We know we have collective agreements coming due, starting right away with the Power Corporation, and very shortly after that as we move forward into the 18th Assembly just about all the collective agreements are going to come due. We’re going to need to sit down and negotiate fair but affordable agreements that are going to reflect the need to keep our expenditures and our revenues in sync. We cannot have our expenditure growth exceed our revenue growth. That discussion is going to happen and that will lead to looking at how we manage the programs and services, things like vacancy rates, if we have to make choices, what are they? But there are very real things that are now underway and this budget, we’ve been setting the stage for that and this budget continues to lay out that plan.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Yakeleya.
Yes, indeed, Mr. Speaker. The Minister is correct that we’re going to have to make some real hard, cold fact decisions and some things that we know for sure that just need to stay in our communities or in our centres.
I want to ask the Minister, given that what he’s portraying right now, is that something that we need to look at within our Crown corporations or agencies and say it makes sense? I know one of the issues right now, the Minister of Health is putting the health boards together to reduce the cost and make it more efficient.
Do we look at that type of avenue with, say, our energy sectors and our other areas that we know that makes a lot of sense for our small territory?
Everything that’s funded by GNWT money, I believe, has to be considered. We talked about leaving no stone unturned. That doesn’t matter if it’s the Power Corp, the health boards, divisional boards, housing folks. It doesn’t matter. We have to make sure that we manage all the money. This body votes on every penny that runs those 5,000 employees, all our boards, agencies and our own government departments, so we have to look at them all. As the Member asked, are all options on the table, and the answer is, once again, yes.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. The Member for Range Lake, Mr. Dolynny.
