Thank you, Madam Chair. My comments focus on the chapter on looking ahead on page 11 of the budget address. The looking ahead section looked fairly uncertain and bleak. That’s how I would characterize it. Our aspirations as a territory, our expenditures are growing, especially in the small communities where we want to have programs and services. In some we aren’t able to do it because of the rising cost of doing business outside of the larger centres; for example, having a nurse in Colville Lake, the operations expenditures of having one nurse in Colville Lake or an RCMP in our small communities. I think there are about 10 or 11 communities without full-time RCMP members and there are about eight communities without nurses. So it’s bleak for us in the small communities. There are certain programs and services we aren’t able to do because of the cost of having that. So there are only certain programs and services that are in operation in some communities. Some communities say good luck, see if you can get it.
The revenue is not there for us. The Minister is right when he stated that our expenditures cannot be above our revenue. Our revenue right now, our biggest source for government comes from the federal government. That’s what it says; $1.8 billion comes from one source. These are the transfers the government gets in various departments. Our small population of 42,000, maybe growing less now, because the population is also a contributing factor to our territorial formula financing, so if we don’t have the numbers, we don’t get the amount of money that we want to have. There’s a plan in place to bring in 2,000 people by 2019-20. That’s something that we need to look at again, to see if it’s realistic, if it’s something that’s achievable.
I want it to say in the budget that it’s really about tightening our belts with what we have now. We should be happy with what we have now, be happy with the programs we have. It means that we have a huge number of government employees, well over 5,000. There are 2,400 government employees in Yellowknife alone. That’s a whole industry itself. So it’s self-sustaining here. I wouldn’t mind having a tenth of that in the Sahtu. That is a self-sustaining industry itself, government employees, so it’s a high number here. We are talking about devolution, decentralization, so I am looking ahead to see what this is going to be like in the Sahtu communities or the communities outside of Yellowknife in regards to not going to the edge, as the Minister has said, not to be pushed over the edge. Some of our communities know that already. Some of the programs are not offered in our small communities and we fight for them.
One of the things that we need to look at is the economy. That is what pays for programs and services. The economy right now is not very good. It’s okay down in this area because you have your activities around the mining and diamond mines. That brings in a lot of dollars into the southern parts of the Northwest Territories. The economy is good here, so good that the Premier wants to consider looking at a road to the mine. He wants to look at 150 kilometres, do a study, from Yellowknife to one of the mines. That’s how good the economy is with the mines.
We need the economy up in our region where the unemployment rate is fairly high. The employment rate is below 50 percent in four of my Sahtu communities, except Norman Wells, which is an oil and gas town. That oil and gas town really drives the unemployment rate down and it’s a good source of business for people that are working.
Looking ahead, I guess, we really have to look at some of the major factors in our budget. The one right now that I would like to have some discussion, hopefully before this Assembly is concluded, is the cost of living in our small communities in the Northwest Territories. We have the NTPC and NUL, I think it’s called – Northland Utilities. There are two distributors of energy power into the communities. The high cost of power to our communities… We have to have some good news as to the petroleum products and lowering the costs of heating fuel, gasoline. We just recently had a report out by the Auditor General on the Nutrition North Program, the cost of food, transporting food into our small communities. Economic activity in our small communities, we need to look at how we get costs down in our small communities.
Another big factor is the growing sensation of having GNWT employees hired. When do we stop and say that’s enough, there are more employees than the population? When do we say enough is enough and how can we have this discussion here? In that sense, I look forward to some discussion and how we start doing some of the things in our communities more efficiently and effectively with the type of money that’s coming into the Northwest Territories?
Again, 1.2 billion of our dollars come from the federal government. Basically we are like a provincial type of government but we don’t wear the coat of a provincial government; we’re still a territorial government as the budget tells us. The reality that we may be able to control all things is not quite enough to where we think we should be getting more of the dollars to serve our people, based on the remoteness and the type of living that we have in the Northwest Territories.
I guess for me it’s a real shift in responsibility in our communities. I guess one of the things is to accept the realities of living in Colville Lake or Deline and say this is the cost of living here, or do we change that, or do we change that to something that may not be real?
I want to just say those are my comments to the Minister, Madam Chair. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. Any response, Mr. Miltenberger?
Thank you, Madam Chair. I was under the understanding that we were going to respond every third… Thank you.
Thank you, Minister Miltenberger. The next person I have on the list for general comments is Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Madam Chair. Welcome to the Minister and his guests.
I’ll just start by saying I appreciated the budget as the Minister laid it out. I thought it was a reasonably good budget as far as it went. It was certainly a good budget speech, although we might want to think about how to present in additional engaging ways and response. But there was much that was unsaid as well. I don’t expect the Minister to be able to cover everything. But I want to acknowledge that it was a very frank and honest budget, acknowledging fully many of our challenges. The unsustainable nature of our current budgeting and fiscal situation was clearly laid out. Primarily, of course, our annual increase in expenses is five times or more greater than our annual increase in revenues, so that’s something that needs to be addressed.
I think I’m on record as supporting many of the initiatives that were highlighted in the address and are incorporated in the budget. The economic outlook as laid out is somewhat grim, and I think this budget goes some way to recognize those realities, although we’re still waiting to hear about our new borrowing limit and so on and discuss what we’ll do with that.
In some areas I see us trying to do the same thing hard. You know, this situation is being faced by many jurisdictions in Canada and globally and it’s related to how we’ve gone about business in the past, and I don’t think trying to do the same thing harder is necessarily the best response. I try to profile that in my approach to our House business.
The Minister mentioned a perfect storm of shocks. I think those things used to be rare. I remember when the term was coined, a perfect storm and a book that came out on the perfect storm. Unfortunately, that’s now becoming part of our everyday jargon. So when we budget, we must budget with the likelihood that these perfect storms will be coming more frequently when we do our fiscal planning and so on.
The Minister said no increase in taxes. You know, that’s the reality. I think we can do different things with taxes beyond just having no net increase, and I’d like to see this government wrestle with that a little bit one of these days soon.
Again, just for the record, the $1.1 million to the Wellness Court, I’m very appreciative of that and I’m glad to see that finally happening. The integrated approach to case management across departments, $440,000 I think that’s dedicated, is long overdue and well recognized by my colleagues and Cabinet. I’m glad to see we’re putting our toe in the water a little bit more firmly on that.
Employment service officers, support for seniors, all things that I support equally. The transfer of $1.6 million from ECE to the NWT Housing Corporation is something I very much appreciate. I think the government was listening when we brought up issues on that. I would like to see that built upon. I would like to see this as an initial effort, with some evaluation, of course. I think there’s an opportunity to improve our service to income assistance clients who are struggling with housing issues by putting our housing experts in charge and, through that, gaining some financial efficiencies as well.
The $1.1 million for Early Childhood Development is long overdue. I know my colleagues will recall when the House recommended and put forward $1.1 million, $1.3 million in the very first year of this Assembly. Nothing much happened with that, so my question to the Minister is: Is this finally going to do that work that we called for several years ago, and is it new dollars or is this just re-profiling existing dollars? That was not clear.
On the economy, the Economic Development Strategy, I support that work. Again, $2.5 million for a whole range of activities – agriculture, film, tourism, commercial fisheries, entrepreneurship – all of that great stuff, but is that just re-profiling those $2.5 million, or if those are new dollars, how much are new dollars? How much are we really putting money where our mouth is here?
Again, the 1.7 million new dollars, that’s clearly laid out in the budget for yet more mineral development strategies subsidies. I was able to attend a meeting of the Mineral Industry of Canada recently and they’re on the march for more and more subsidies, so their lobbying is apparently being successful in every jurisdiction, including the Northwest Territories. I think we want to take a close look at that. I actually don’t have difficulties if, in fact, it’s vetted through a public interest policy lens, and that’s not happening. This is being directed by industry and we know the pain that comes from that. We’re very familiar with that, probably more than any other jurisdiction. So again doing the same thing harder without learning the lessons.
Infrastructure comments in the budget, not really purvey of this budget specifically, but I think we want to be careful. I would say the cost of living should be our number one. Of course, this government is on record as believing that very large, expensive, rarely used infrastructure is the way to go, and of course, we have a record of failure generating that economic development. Again, trying to do the same thing harder without any evidence of success just seems a bit crazy to me. Brick walls are easy to find; it’s tougher to find the right path.
Also, I would say something that’s not spoken to in the budget, other than note the quiet front on the fossil fuel development side, is we need to come to grips with the realities and become responsible leaders. We’ve devolved authority from Ottawa. Let’s now use it and provide, unilaterally if necessary, the leadership that Canada is looking for in the Northwest Territories. I know this is very hard for Cabinet and for my colleagues whose regions have come to believe the rhetoric that this is the answer to their economic development, but I think it’s abundantly clear now what the consequences of that are.
We’re looking now for leadership, somebody who’s actually willing to recognize the facts, recognize the science and recognize the opportunities. A renewable energy-based economy is one that provides distribution of benefits across our residents, do not accumulate to that 20 percent that’s getting ever richer while our 20 percent gets ever poorer. We are the most disparate jurisdiction in Canada, as we know. There are huge opportunities there, both for economic development and for things that strengthen our social structures, our employment opportunities and so on.
I recognize that this is going to be a painful process, but we’ve dealt with things like this before and shifted our society. I’m excited about the opportunities in the Northwest Territories to again provide leadership.
The low fuel prices right now provide for an opportunity to deal with the energy infrastructure that we have put on hold, some of our hydro resources and so on. Soaring costs were mostly related to those. At the same time, renewable energy costs are declining rapidly, 80 percent for solar, similar source of declines for wind and so on.
I’m out of time, but I’m generally pleased with this budget and the recognition of a number of things that my colleagues and myself have raised in the House and the realities that it recognizes. I’ll look forward to contributing to the debate over the next few weeks and look forward to some responses to a few questions.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Next on the list for general comments I have Mr. Menicoche.
Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I just want to say that in our final budget for 2015-16 I’m glad that the Minister and the finance staff were able to maintain our targets and not have a deficit budget this fiscal year. But they do correctly point out that as we try to take advantage of federal programming, we are reaching our borrowing limit, so those are challenges there. When it comes to deficits and borrowing, I know that the outlook of government is a little bit different than a business. However, it’s still debt. But at the same time, I believe that for the benefit of the communities and the people of the Northwest Territories that we do have to do what Cabinet is doing and going to Ottawa and saying look, we do need more borrowing room, we do have an infrastructure deficit, and we do want to stimulate our economy. For these reasons I’m supportive of us looking at further debt. Whether it’s an additional billion, I’m questioning that right now, but I do know that in order to move forward we will need more debt. I’m convinced by the Minister and his staff that we do have the capacity to handle that debt. But it’s in the news, like Ontario, theirs is out of control in the next three or four years there. They’re not too sure what to do. But for us, I don’t see that kind of imminent situation that we’re in, but we are acquiring more debt. I don’t know if additional billing is the answer, but certainly we do need more, because I know that these investments will protect the Northwest Territories, our communities and regions in the future.
I just want to say that this week has been a particularly busy one, especially with the onset of preparing for the budget, and I forgot to mention my favourite two words in my three Member’s statements this week, which is Highway 7. But of course, I’m well aware that this is an operation and maintenance budget, but I’m certain that maybe at the appropriate time when we’re discussing the Department of Transportation, I’ll be looking at what kind of an additional or O and M expenditures will be happening with Highway No. 7.
Some of the things that are concerning in my region and communities, in the small communities, most particularly Fort Liard, was about retaining our mental health workers, even nursing staff. I’m not too sure what strategy government has in retaining staff in the smaller communities. I believe that we need some kind of retainment strategy. In fact, it’s probably not only my riding or region that sees it all the time, is that somebody gets hired, they move to a smaller community and, for whatever reason, probably less than a year, they’re moving out and we’ve got to restart everything. In the meantime, it’s our constituents and people who suffer because those resources aren’t there to help them, particularly in Fort Liard. It’s almost every summer for the past four or five years, a mental health worker quits or moves on by May or June, and throughout the summer months there have been several incidents, some of them fatalities, and people are grieving, people needed additional help and the resources weren’t there. It’s never planned that way, of course, but I do believe we need consistent mental health workers and nursing in our small communities. I don’t know if there’s a strategy to retain workers in our smaller communities.
In the budget it speaks about the addition of five additional government service officers, and I think that’s excellent because we’ve seen how some of these workers really help out the residents of the smaller communities, able to fill out forms, address different departments and handle a lot of those issues. I just want to say that before the government services officers were there, the residents would actually – for me anyway – wait until I do my community tours, go into the communities and ask me specifically about which forms to fill out, how do they address these concerns. Now with the resident government services officer and with all the training that they’re doing, they’re our new front-line workers, they’re handling a lot of these routine administration questions by the residents and the things that government needs. I’m really grateful for their work, and I look forward to the other five as they do the work for our smaller communities.
I know that with our Aboriginal and Regional Recruitment Strategy, we continue to move forward with that, and I see a little bit of improvement, but we’re still stuck at around our 30 percent Aboriginal employment numbers. But certainly I know that Human Resources is doing all they can to hire from the North, but I still see some barriers. People are telling me they are having a hard time getting their foot in the door of government. I hope we continue to be aware of this, reassess it and continue to work and improve on our Aboriginal Recruitment Strategy.
One of the other things education-wise is my region supports junior kindergarten. I’m pleased that Premier McLeod and Minister Beaulieu were able to come with me as we were able to view some of the junior kindergarten in the Nahendeh riding. We saw how it works, but I think the parents, the teachers, everybody likes how it works but I really believe there’s a need for further support. I know the concept is that as there are more students in your school, funding will go up because we fund districts per capita. So it’s self-sustaining. I know that the Province of Ontario, when they implemented their junior kindergarten about 10 years ago, there was actually a $1.5 billion investment. They provided the extra facilities and extra teachers. We only committed to the increased revenue from increased students. I don’t think that’s manageable, Madam Chair.
So I’m looking at this government, as we review junior kindergarten, to say, if we’re going to continue to go down this road, we will need to provide additional resources. I am saying they will need more teaching ability or teachers who are specialized to deliver junior kindergarten. I will be speaking later on in this session about that.
For the smaller communities, we have to continue our small community job creation programming. I see that’s still on the books. They considered cutting that back, but I’m glad that it’s still there. It’s very important to the small communities to continue our job creation programming.
I see that our economy is in a bit of a decline. The Nahendeh region has always largely been government-dependent, so should we start looking at increasing fiscal restraint? We really have to balance it off, the ability of people having jobs and sustaining their own small community economies. With that, I conclude. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. I guess that was three speakers. I will turn the floor over to Minister Miltenberger.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I thank the Members for their comments. I will address the broad issues we’ve made note of. There are some fairly specific departmental issues the Ministers will be addressing when they appear before the House to defend their budgets.
With regard to some of the common issues, I appreciate the positive comments on the budget. It is a challenge to balance the many competing needs with not enough resources. The reality is this is not so much about restraint as it is about living within our means. We are spending almost $2 billion for 42,000 people and we have expenditure growth that is starting to exceed our revenues. It’s not that our revenues are being cut back. They are not growing as fast as we’d like, but they are increasing very modestly. The way we have come to expend money has not declined or not flattened out the same way as our revenue has, so we are spending $2 billion and we just have to figure out how to spend it most effectively. There are some hard questions being posed by the Members.
Mr. Yakeleya talks about employees, the size of government. It’s a legitimate question. What is the limit to growth? How many employees can business or government or the $1.8 billion afford?
At the same time, Mr. Yakeleya often pointed out the often contradictory positions we find ourselves in. As he asked in one breath about the number of employees and that we have too many, he pointed out that we still need nurses in every community and RCMP in every community. It’s a challenge we all face, addressing the contradiction that we want to have increased services at our community levels, but at the broad macro level in this Legislature we have to come to an understanding about the size of government, for example.
We’ve been having some discussion in the House about energy and the cost of living and how we’re structured. How do we bring the costs down? Those are very fundamental, broad issues. We know we have to generate power more cheaply, and we’ve indicated that investing in alternative is the way to do that. At the Energy Charrette, as the Premier pointed out earlier today, the guest speaker pointed out we have the most complicated 65 megawatts of power that he’s ever seen. So not only are there generation issues but we have to look at a system that is very complicated and how do we make it more streamlined and effective. We have to look at all the aspects of that.
So the concern is about the future looking grim and bleak, to me we just have to come to a balance with our expenditures. We are not talking cutbacks; we are not talking reduced budgets. We are just saying we as a government have an appetite for growth that exceeds our ability to sustain it. We have been growing so consistently that people now consider not growing as a cutback. It’s a distinction, a very important distinction that people see not growing as restraint that somehow we must restrain ourselves when all of us around the table know when we get our paycheques, we look at what we can afford. Our income is coming in, our income is some of the highest in the country, but we have tastes and appetites that put us in a situation where we spend more than we bring in.
I would just like to make an observation, as well, about our debt. We have debt and the biggest number, about $400 million, is long-term debt. It’s debt that is self-financing. We still have to keep it on our books, like the Power Corp debt, some $180 million, the bridge debt, most of that is being paid for by our revenue stream that is separate from this budget. At the same time, we have our short-term debt, $272 million. That is the kind of debt that I get every month when I put all my expenditures on my credit card, and when the bill comes in, I pay it off, short-term debt. We all do that.
So when you put all those numbers together, some folks try to say we can’t handle the money, you’re out of control, we don’t deserve any more money. I would argue the actual debt we do have, real debt that’s not paid off by outside revenue streams or that’s not just short-term debt that we pay off every year, is very modest for a corporation that has almost a $2 billion budget. That’s why we have an Aa1 credit rating and all our indicators are strong and why we are going to negotiate and get agreement from the federal government in the next few weeks, hopefully, to bump up our borrowing limit. That’s why we can afford to say we need to make these critical investments in roads, in energy and generation. That’s because collectively we’ve managed these budgets year after year in a way that’s put us in that position, and it’s allowed us, if you think back, 2007-08, when there was a huge economic downturn, the worst since the Great Depression, we survived that in fairly good shape. We rebuilt and things have regenerated.
We’re still about 25 percent down from where we were during the glory days when the mines were being built and everything was getting into operation, but we have rebuilt and we had enough flexibility in our budgets to withstand almost $80 million just in the course of a few months, costs that came because of these perfect storm events that Mr. Bromley talked about, the fire, the drought, the low water. Once again, we’ve managed our way through that. It has taken out our flexibility to a great degree, but we are still on solid financial ground.
Now we just have to look at the hard questions that we’ve been talking about here just in the last few minutes with the Members’ comments about the size of government, what do we do to control our costs. We know one of our biggest costs, about half a billion dollars, roughly, is tied to staffing and all the related costs to that, so it is an area where there is going to be all sorts of activity here starting in the next few weeks. The Power Corp folks are going to be looking at bargaining. We know that right after that all the other collective agreements in the government are going to come due. We’ve talked and I’ve talked about fair and affordable arrangements with the staff, the debate about the size of government. I looked at the numbers yesterday. I asked on the vacancies. We have roughly 1,000 vacancies of different kinds, some that are in the process of being filled, some that are vacant, some that are because they haven’t been deleted, but some that have to remain empty but there’s a… We have a significant amount of things to look at when we look at how to manage the money.
Mr. Bromley asked specific questions about new money or re-profiling. He referenced the education initiative and the wellness courts, and those are new money. It’s not re-profiled money. The one that is re-profiled money is the income support, changing income support into folks to help people get jobs and the taking of money from income support to put it into housing. That’s re-profiled, transferred money.
I would also argue that as we come to grips with fossil fuels, we’ve been on that trek now really seriously, in my mind, this is year eight. The beginning of the last Assembly, if my memory serves me correctly, we came back from one of our retreats as a government early on, we put $60 million on the table to start the work. We’re looking at building our own biomass industry. We’re looking at converting our own buildings. We’re investing tens of millions of dollars in encouraging people to look at more energy-efficient ways of doing business. We’re investing in solar. We’re investing in looking at wind, and we’ve committed to putting our borrowing limit towards very significant investments in the thermal communities to the transition that Mr. Bromley talks about. But it is a transition. It’s not a stop one thing and start another. Even our guest speaker at the charrette said clearly you have to move or you can move or should move to solar and batteries and other alternative energies, but keep your diesel as backup because you need that failsafe and redundancy. This is a transition.
One of the big challenges for us… We can deal with those costs, of course, but our transportation costs, all over the world, I mean, the North is no different. Transportation costs are a very significant part of our fossil fuel consumption and there are not many viable alternatives to that at this point, be it for flying airplanes or driving down a road in your vehicle going to another community or going south. But where we do have control, we are making that transition, and I can accept that it may not be, and I do accept, because I’ve served with Mr. Bromley now for, this is the eighth year that he would like us to move much faster than we are, but we are continuing that investment.
He made a comment about a record of failure on projects. We have done a lot of projects. We, as I indicated in the budget address, by the end of this coming year, we will have started or are working on and are committed to about $1.5 billion in projects. I do remember some particularly in my time at this table that stick out that were problematic, two. One was the North Slave Correctional Facility, which goes back maybe three governments, which ended up as a cost-plus project. We got it done but it wasn’t as efficient and as effective as we would have liked. We did and we do acknowledge that the bridge project had some rough patches as well. But on all those projects, at the end of the day, we did end up with some infrastructure that is critical for territory building advancement. On the bridge one in particular, I don’t think anybody would now say they’d like to go back to the good old days of winter roads and ferries. We learn and we keep learning, and we’re going to do that as we look at things like the P3 at Stanton.
The issue of investments is going to be a critical one. We made a commitment already that the minute we hear the final outcome of the discussions between the Premier and the Prime Minister, that we will gather around the table collectively to talk about what that means and how do we move forward on those critical investments and what do we do as an Assembly and how do we set things up for the incoming Assembly.
I believe that there are with every challenge, I think, significant opportunities. We know what those opportunities are. We’ve got some very good feedback on energy. We know the things we have to continue to keep investing in, and we’ve done that again this budget, which is in the social program area, programs and services where we spend about $1.6 billion, and we’re going to continue those commitments. But we are in the situation now in the life of this government where we’re going to be starting to make those tougher decisions that we talk about that can no longer be avoided and the need to talk about the things that we’ve never come to grips with like the size of government and what is affordable. Not just government but all the boards and agencies tied to government as well.
We have a lot of good things on the go and we have a lot of challenges, but of the five Assemblies I’ve been in, every one has faced challenges. They ask me what was the most difficult time as my time as Finance Minister. Have there been some really tough circumstances? I can tell you, looking back right now, the most difficult time was the 13th Assembly when the federal government cut their transfers overnight with almost no notice. I think it was 5 or 10 percent. We came in as a new government. We thought we had about an $80 billion deficit. By the time we staggered home at Christmas in shock, we were cutting $150 million out of the budget back then for the whole territory, and we had less than a billion in the budget. It was an incredibly traumatic time for the whole territory, including Nunavut. Everything since then has been on the road forward and up. Still challenges, but the first year after devolution I think we have a very good foundation to build on, things we’ve got to take care of, but this is just good management, and I’m confident that as we keep working together that we can do that.
Thank you, Minister Miltenberger. Continuing on with general comments, I have Mr. Bouchard.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I guess I just had some general comments. I had some yesterday. I know some of the detail will be in the different departments.
One of the first comments I have is about the debt. The Minister talked about the debt. I know a couple of years ago we re-evaluated the way we calculate that debt. I know he talked about some of that Power Corporation debt that didn’t used to be there. I wonder if the department has some of the information the way we used to calculate debt. I know the federal government has changed the way we play ball. Can we get some of that information to compare apples to apples? Right now we’re comparing apples to oranges. The new way we calculate debt is quite a bit different. I know we had a threshold of $600 million for a long time. Now we’re back up to $800 million and I know that’s not straight from spending. The recalculation has been part of that issue. I am wondering if we could get the comparables to the years past so we can compare all the way through.
I think Mr. Yakeleya talked about some of the priorities the government has been announcing about the roads into the Slave Geologic area and some of that study. Obviously, we’ve been discussing the Mackenzie Valley Highway a lot throughout this Assembly. We’ve agreed on the Tuk-Inuvik highway as the first portion of that and it almost seems like we are now shifting gears and refocusing. I hope that’s not the case. We still need that Mackenzie Valley process to go forward. Maybe if there is opportunity in the other direction, I think the other direction needs to be some sort of partnership. Those mines that are creating work in that need to be part of the solution. I mean, I understand there’s an economic benefit for the GNWT to see some of those resources, but industry is the one that’s benefitting the most. We get questioned quite a bit from our constituents about the benefit that we’re getting from those operations. I’m a pro-business person, but I asked the Minister the other day about how do we get those 2,000 people, how do we decrease the fly-in/fly-out traffic and try to keep people in the North.
I understand the concept of us building that resource. I was just in Vancouver talking to some of the mine companies in Nunavut that are interested in that area and are serviced out of Yellowknife, but that’s private industry. I think there needs to be more of a partnership and I’m not sure if that’s the direction the government is going with that road to the Slave Geologic area.
From my area, I have a couple of big questions. Obviously, we don’t, in this budget, talk about any dredging studies. If we’re talking about the roads, which used to be all federal responsibility, now we know dredging was a federal responsibility and I think we need to investigate what the cost of dredging in the Northwest Territories is. I know that Mr. Yakeleya has brought it up in several of our discussions, other Members have brought it up and I know Tuktoyaktuk is interested in some dredging programs. We have to look at what dredging is required. If there’s a federal responsibility there, then we need to keep the pressure on them. I think there is some merit of our government looking at the opportunity. That’s an infrastructure area that we’re not spending a lot of money on. I’ve met with some of the marine people and they see us putting a lot of money into transportation, but more into the road side. The marine resupply, marine support needs to be there as well. We’ve depended on that to support a lot of communities in the Northwest Territories. Obviously, I have a strong interest in Hay River being a hub and a transportation hub for that type of stuff, but we need to look at that as infrastructure as well. I think we’ve left that to the side and focused on highways. We have to look at that as an opportunity as well.
The other questioning I get is the economic spin. We have seen the Tuk-Inuvik highway. We are pushing the Mackenzie Valley road up to the North and we’ve seen the megaproject coming forward with Stanton and that’s a territorial project, but it’s a big project in the Yellowknife area. We often get the question in the Hay River area or the South Slave area, what’s the big project for the South Slave now that we know we’ve parked the concept of the hydro expansion now that it’s a $1.2 billion project. What’s the megaproject that’s going to help the economy in the South Slave? We have to work on that. I know we have a few ideas. We need to upgrade the rail to keep that transportation hub going. We also look at the cost of living. Everyone in our communities talked about the cost of living. We know there’s gas in the Cameron Hills being taken from the North. Is there an opportunity to bring natural gas to the South Slave to service Hay River, Enterprise, Kakisa and even go towards Fort Smith?
We’ve talked to a couple of proponents that are interested in that expansion and are questioning southern companies that have the knowledge to find out some of those costs. We think if we had natural gas in the South Slave, we’d reduce that cost of living in these areas. If we see a reduction, especially if we can use some of that to generate power, it benefits everyone as well.
Those are my main comments. I think we have a lot of comments in many different areas. Obviously, we have quite a few questions in the Hay River area on the intension of taking over the Hay River Health Authority. If we are going to have a one-health system, how we are going to do that? Our system is different. We aren’t part of the GNWT. What would that cost be? We still haven’t got that in place. How do we move forward on that?
Mental health has been an issue. Last week was Mental Health Week and we get a lot of people talking about that. The treatment centre on the Hay River Reserve has been shut down. We’re looking for a replacement to use that facility. Drug and alcohol is a big issue in our territory. We need to have some of those facilities in the Northwest Territories. I understand we’re sending people out to southern programs, but we want to do a homegrown program. It’s difficult that we have that asset sitting in the Hay River area and it’s not being used and there are a lot of people who are very frustrated that that got shut down very quickly and there has been no replacement for it or use for it.
We have many different issues dealing with economics, contracting, BIP manufacturing. Hay River is a big area for BIP manufacturing but we’re not seeing some of that implementation, whether it’s from Public Works or ITI, and recognizing some of the BIP manufacturers. How can we build that industry? Supplying things we buy typically from the South, how do we replace it and build it in the North?
Those are some areas I would like to see covered going forward. There are many more in different departments, but those are some of my opening comments. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Bouchard. Continuing on with general comments, I have Mr. Nadli.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Some comments regarding our budget for this year and most likely our last, generally the budget presents itself as being very balanced in terms of ensuring our expenditures do not exceed our revenues. That has always been the basic approach and tenet of any good organization that tries to deliver service to its citizens or its constituents. This government has done a fair job over the last few years, at least from being an MLA during that time.
The riding that I represent is the Deh Cho riding. We are in the southern part of the NWT and we enjoy the conveniences of being on the highway. We also see a greater influx of tourism coming up. If people choose to travel with their families by vehicle, we are the first communities that people see. At the same time, if there is anything that is fairly universal in terms of how the constituents in the Deh Cho riding look upon the needs and expectations of this government, it is in the areas of jobs and businesses and how it is that this government could try to position itself to try to invigorate business opportunities and enhance jobs at the local level. It’s been something that I have been consistently hearing throughout the communities. At the same time, there are still some basic needs that communities want to see more of and that’s in terms of programs and services.
For the past three years, I’ve seen at least the Minister and his department come up with a budget. It’s always, I think, a great challenge to try to deal with the complexity of what we’re faced with in terms of how we live up here in the North and have very high social needs. We have our social sector in terms of our programs and services for health and social services as one of the biggest areas that we have for programs and service delivery from this government. So that coupled with a small corporate sector that does business in the NWT and, of course, obviously our tax base is fairly small. So we’re quite heavily dependent on federal funding and that’s always been a challenge. But from what I’ve seen for the past three years, it’s been a remarkable feat for us to try to deliver and meet the needs of our people up here in the NWT. I think that’s been quite commendable, at least in my eyes.
There’s always a push, from my perspective, to try and encourage this government to settle a land claim. If you settle a land claim, especially in the Deh Cho and to come up with a self-government agreement, it’s going to add to the certainty of the entire North. The Akaitcho Government is still negotiating their land claim too. I always try to be a bystander. I’ve been involved with that process before. I’d like to see the timely conclusion of an agreement at some point. I was really hoping that we would come up with the bilateral agreement with the Dehcho First Nations and this government by the end of the 17th Assembly and we still have some time. I really am optimistic and hopeful that this leadership or this government will do that and enable the variables to take place and let it happen.
I’m a bit concerned that the government that we’re trying to operate on behalf of our citizens is becoming more centralized in a way that most of the workers and government services are held in Yellowknife and the regional centres. I‘ve heard the term very loosely of decentralization thrown around conveniently for some time, but I haven’t really seen anything in terms of direct benefits for small communities. I understand that there are perhaps some logistical challenges in terms of having available housing, adequate services to try to attract people to live out in the communities, but I think more could be done in terms of trying to decentralize some positions out in the communities. That’s not to say that this government has made some very commendable achievements. One primary achievement has been the government services offices that have been established in a majority of the communities in the NWT.
Some other general comments in terms of some of the initiatives that this government is undertaking like the Economic Development Strategy that I look forward to seeing in terms of having this government unveil how it is that it wants to invigorate the economy. It’s always interesting to watch and see how those major initiatives and strategies will be unveiled and implemented, but also at the same time how it is that we’re going to monitor and ensure that there’s a level of control in ensuring that they are successfully implemented and made to work at the community level and for the entire North.
One area that I think I’m fairly passionate about is our territorial parks. In my riding we have, as I said, some very prized territorial parks that people have come across. In fact, I think last summer one of our parks in the South Slave in the Enterprise area was recognized as being one of the top 10 parks that people would visit. So I think this government has to make better efforts in trying to enhance our parks, work with the employees that are working there if they’re contract employees. These people, the front-line workers, tourists, when they travel up north, they engage with people and those are the people that ITI or this government puts in place. We put our trust in them, and at the same time, we put our confidence in them that they’re going to create a good service for tourists that travel up here in the NWT. At the same time, they are given the resources to deliver a good service so that people can come back up here to the North. Similarly to that matter, I look forward to perhaps more initiatives in trying to enhance tourism so that we also tap into the fishing market in terms of developing guides.
Specifically, some other hopeful optimism that I have on behalf of my constituents is looking at the funding systems that are in place in terms of the investments that we put into the communities and the businesses, especially the service sector. We have hotels, we have restaurants and perhaps lodges where we need to ensure that we market them well so that people know that they exist out there and they use them and that we work with those businesses so that we help them along as well.
Some other general comments in terms of the constituents that I represent, their concerns are health. Health has to ensure that it’s responsive to the needs of our citizens in the NWT, in our communities. It also needs to be accessible so that it’s readily made available to our people. One example is I’ve been really, really pushing the idea of the enhancement of the Pharmacare program. I know I’ve heard this before. We have an aging population. At some point it’s going to make more sense for us to provide services at the local level. So we need to enhance, as an example, our Home Care Program staff so that they’re professionally trained, they’re tapped into the local labour markets and we have people working from the communities at the same time. It could be that we have our RNs working with our local people in the Home Care Program when they visit elders in their communities to bring foot care, or doing diabetes awareness, you know, the preventative care so that people can stay at home as long as they can.
There are still things that could be made available in terms of how it is that this government engages with the local communities. Schools have been, I think, very consistent in terms of trying to brandish the goals to students that education is the best alternative at this point of trying to improve our lives in our communities, and we need to keep focusing on that goal and inspiring our students to continue with their education.
Of course, the riding that I represent sometimes is challenged with being caught between those two district centres we have, the Deh Cho district with service out of Fort Simpson and sometimes we’re serviced out of the South Slave office, either Hay River or Fort Smith, and sometimes it’s challenging to try to figure out which district you’re supposed to operate out of.
Just briefly in closing, there are some things that I think still need to be focused on and it’s just cost of living. I think this government is making steps to try to address that. The transportation corridors, does it include pipelines, does it include railroads? Those are just some comments that I have, and with the budget process there has to be a public element of ensuring that people have their opinions expressed and that they’re listened to as well. I think hopefully the Borrowing Authorization Act will go down that line. Mahsi.
Thank you, Mr. Nadli. Again, continuing on with general comments, I have Mr. Moses.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. It’s an honour to actually give some general comments and feedback on our last operations budget for the 17th Legislative Assembly. When you look at the budget and see all the work that’s been going on over the life of this Assembly and the collaboration that Cabinet and Regular Members and standing committees have worked on and addressed, it’s great to see things like the Economic Opportunities Strategy, the Mineral Strategy, as well as Early Childhood Development Action Plan, the Mental Health and Addictions Action Plan, as well as the Anti-Poverty Strategy, and even to a bigger extent the Education Renewal and Innovation taking the whole education system and trying to change it so that we can get more of our residents with quality education and also seeing the investments that we’ve had in early childhood development. Mind you, I know there have been a lot concerns about junior kindergarten and that focus should have went on the most critical years, which was from zero to two, to get our residents the development enhancement as they move forward going into school.
Another big thing I’d like to compliment the government on is the integrated case management support that we’re moving ahead with and taking a different approach in how we deal with our residents, whether it’s in the justice system that we have justice, health and education all working together to make people healthy and part of society again.
A couple other big things in here, being the Member for Inuvik Boot Lake and working with residents up in the Beaufort-Delta, is the Inuvik-Tuk highway. We’ve seen the benefits arising from that in terms of the economy, people working in the communities, fewer people going on income assistance, so some benefits from creating that infrastructure.
You’ve heard here today about the debt wall and the volatility in taxes and our revenues, and I’ll also do a plug here. I did a statement on it yesterday in the House, and that’s the Mackenzie Valley Fibre Optic Link. I think that will provide this government with the sustainable revenue not only for Inuvik but the Northwest Territories, and we won’t have to go through the ups and downs of wondering where we’re going to get our revenues from to take care of these $1.6 billion budgets. Not only that but I think as the cable is being laid right now, that the government should start looking at how the fibre optic link is going to affect programs and services that we have in the Northwest Territories and the cost effectiveness of it. Do we have all the resources available in the communities that, you know, we can cut down travel costs, we can cut down shipping costs, things of that nature where we can see this $1.6 billion budget kind of lowered? When you listen to people in the public and you talk to people that are interested in this budget, we’ve got to ask ourselves, is this $1.6 billion budget sustainable? Are we going to be able to cover it next year and the year after that? Not to mention the forced growth that we see each year within departments.
Our government provides some of the best programs and services to residents of the Northwest Territories. When you look at it that way, you’ve almost got to ask yourself, is government making people rely on government instead of empowering them to go out and live healthy lifestyles? I was in Ottawa for the NWT Days and speaking with the Scandinavian countries and the way they work with their residents to get them healthy, to get them educated, to get the residents of those countries investing in the programs and services through a tax-based system. Somewhere along the line in the life of all governments, that was overlooked in terms of how we can do that. Obviously, I think it’s too late to even try to impose a tax because of the high cost of living that we have in the Northwest Territories right now.
We all know the economy is pretty slow right now. We have oil and gas companies that are not doing much exploration or work in the North. We see it in the Beaufort-Delta. We see it in the Sahtu. In times like this, I think that as a government we’ve got to start looking and focusing on our other big resource, and that’s the people, so that when oil and gas activity starts to increase again we’ll have educated, trained, skilled people in those areas that can take those jobs so we don’t get the fly-in and fly-out workers taking these jobs from our northern residents. I think in slow times like this that we’ve got to invest in our people to get them healthy and educated so when the economy picks back up, they’re ready to fill those roles, hit the ground running, which will have an impact on our income assistance, our housing and things of that nature.
A couple other things. I’m glad to see that this government is doing more investment in energy, commercial energy, as well as just the regular residents of the Northwest Territories, and looking at biomass, looking at ways we can decrease carbon emissions but also decrease the cost of living in the Northwest Territories. As I said earlier, the collaborative work that all Members did on such investments in prevention, promotion, health, education and training, I think over the last four years or three years, going into our fourth year here, seeing those improvements and seeing the enhancements in those, and I know people of the Northwest Territories are very appreciative that we’re actually taking a different approach.
As I stated earlier, the integrated case management, I think, is going to prove to be a success in terms of working. But moving forward, even on that basis, doing an integrated case management, do we have the resources in place to assist those that are actually doing that type of work? I know it’s a new project and a new way of doing things, and I just want to make sure that as we progress and see how this is making people healthier and part of society, that any challenges that we see that we fix them up right now.
I was also glad to see the Western Arctic Centre for Geomatics up in Inuvik and putting that investment in place before the fibre optic link is up and running.
A couple things that need to be noted here is last summer, having that extreme fire season, the low water levels. Have we prepared ourselves to cover those costs should it happen again this coming summer, and do we have the borrowing capacity to do it and does that put us as a government at risk? That’s only the two that we know from last summer. Something else could happen: floods, other emergencies, Inuvik, Norman Wells has got gas issues. Something happened there. Do we have the money to bail these communities out?
A couple other things that I would have liked to have seen here. One, since we shut down Nats'ejee K'eh, the treatment centre and the mental health support that we have for our residents of the Northwest Territories and detox beds. Detox beds so we can observe patients who come off of substance abuse and see what kind of medical attention they need afterwards. Funding for the child and family services support system. As I mentioned, the Education Renewal Initiative, do we have the dollars to address those, you know? Those are some really big concerns of mine, because we don’t want to do things, change things and have them fail.
With that said, we talked about the increase in the debt wall, and if we do get that increase, it doesn’t mean that we have to spend it, you know? I know we have some plans on the go. We had the Premier make an announcement during NWT Days. If we do get that increase in debt wall, do we have to spend that money? Can we pay off the debt we currently have and continue to provide the programs and services that we do while also taking a practice on how we can spend dollars more efficiently?
We also heard about the increase in population. If we do get that increase, do we have the infrastructure in place? Do we have other programs in place? Licenced daycares? Do we have the housing in place for all these people coming in? If it wasn’t for all the births over the last few years… We’ve seen interprovincial migration in 2013 of over 500 people. In 2014 it was over 600 people. Our budget has increased in that time by over $200 million. Health has increased substantially as well. I mean, we have to look at ways where we can be more efficient in how we run our programs and services in the Northwest Territories. Collectively, we’ve got to do that as 19 Members. We have to look at where we can make the necessary changes but also support the programs that are being brought forth and get everybody’s comments on those.
So, tough times ahead and I think that we shouldn’t leave this for the 18th Assembly and that we have to start addressing some of these concerns now in the months that we have left in the 17th Assembly. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Moses. In keeping with our convention protocol today, we’ll go to Minister Miltenberger to see if he can reply to Mr. Bouchard, Mr. Nadli and Mr. Moses. Minister Miltenberger.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will try to be brief and I will not repeat all the things I said the first go-round. There were some consistent themes here about the borrowing limit, the sustainability of our budgets and the need to start making those hard decisions now, which we concur with.
In regard to Mr. Bouchard, he asked for some history and information of the borrowing limit, how did we get to where we are and just note for the record that we will provide that information to committee. He had some queries about the ice road, the Tibbitt Lake-Contwoyto ice road possibly being converted as a project to an all-weather road and what is the benefit and are we losing our focus on the Mackenzie Valley Highway. The answer is no. The Mackenzie Valley Highway is a very critical piece of our transportation infrastructure. It will form part of the National Highway System when it’s complete, and the piece from Wrigley to Norman Wells is going to be the critical next step and we are very committed to that. However, the ice road conversion is also a very potentially important and beneficial project that would see that ice road converted to an all-weather road, opening a window for the mines that are currently there as well as creating another opportunity for other development in that North Slave Geologic Province. Industry is interested and we are talking to industry and working with industry as we do the technical and business casework about investing in having that happen. So, while they are going to benefit, they are also going to be putting money on the table to help pay for that, and as we’ve done on the bridge, there are other options to look at, as well, such as tolls and things.
I just want to point out the value when we say industry benefits. The whole point in terms of the cost of living is expanding our economic base. If one of mines closes, it’s $400 million, roughly, a year and about 1,200 jobs gone. So when we put in infrastructure that helps add to mine life or enables another mine to start up that might not have been economically viable until we put that infrastructure in, the benefit to everybody in the Northwest Territories is significant in terms of expanded tax base, jobs, money being spent in the North, and we have to keep that in mind as we look at those kinds of investments.
As well, there have been questions about the increase to population, and we indicated that we’re hard at work at that in the House. I talked about it at some length to the press yesterday, but we’re into year four. The Minister of Education is going to be standing up here soon to give us an update on all the significant opportunities that are going to be created with the revamping of the immigrant Nominee Program and the fast-tracking process to get folks in here in as little as six months.
Mr. Bouchard does, as well, raise a good point about the marine resupply and the low water, the dredging, and that’s an issue that has yet to be satisfactorily resolved, but we know it’s of pressing urgency to Hay River.
With the big projects for the South Slave, there is not a megaproject, but recently and in the next few years we’re concluding an almost $60 million hospital in Hay River. They’re just finished a $35 million retrofit in Fort Smith; there’s a new jail going in. Res and Providence are getting health care centres and we’re spending significant amounts of money on the highways, South Slave Highway No. 6, unfortunately not Highway No. 5, but Highway No. 6 and other highways. So it’s not a megaproject, but when you put all of those dollars together, there’s well over $150 million worth of investment. So at the same time we want to keep our eye on whatever other economic opportunities are there.
I do appreciate the comments from the Members about the budget. In regard to Mr. Nadli’s comments, we are working hard with Aurora Wood Pellets, for example, on the setting up of a biomass wood industry in the South Slave where Providence, Resolution, Kakisa, maybe the Hay River Reserve will be beneficiaries through forest management agreements and opportunities to provide the timber and the wood required for the wood pellets. That’s a very good deal.
As the Premier indicated yesterday in regard to the land claims agreements, the government made a very, very generous offer, far in excess of anything that was on the table previously to the Dehcho, both in terms of land quantum and addressing the issue of subsurface. So I think we’ve really stepped up on that one.
I indicated in the budget address, as well, that this government will probably have moved, and this Assembly will have moved, more jobs outside of Yellowknife, I think, than any other government in recent memory. There will be 150 when we conclude the decentralization as referred to and there’s going to be some more coming as we look at other departments that have yet to come forward, like Environment and Natural Resources.
I want to just quickly touch again on the revenue issue. I talked about the debt previously. There’s talk about revenues being flat. In actual point of fact, our own source revenues, which are $425 million, are forecasted to be growing at about 3.5 percent a year for the next five years, which is, by a lot of standards, pretty healthy when you compare it to the overall projections when you factor in what happens to our formula because of all the economic uncertainty and debt and restraint down south. It flattens out our overall growth with the big $1.2 billion we get from our formula down to barely half a percent, but our own economy is actually doing fairly well. It just gets lost with the leveling out of the other pressures from down south.
The Mackenzie Valley Fibre Link, the big opportunity is going to be the final mile for communities up and down the valley, the hooking in of either the microwave or the fibre link into the communities through businesses, dev corps and putting in all the services that are going to be possible with cable and wiring the town. So there’s going to be significant opportunity there.
If this government and this Assembly, when we get the borrowing limit sorted out, the questions we have to answer are similar to some of the questions that Mr. Moses mentioned. Do we have to spend the money? Not necessarily. The big point for us is that as a government, though, we should have the flexibility to in fact have that choice, and if we need to make investments, we should be able to do it and decide on which investments. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister Miltenberger. We’ll turn it over to Ms. Bisaro for the wish of the committee. Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I move that we report progress.
---Carried
At this point I’d like to thank our witnesses here for joining us today. Could I get the Sergeant-at-Arms to please escort our witnesses out of the Chamber. Thank you. Committee, I will now rise and report progress.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Your committee has been considering Tabled Document 188-17(5), NWT Main Estimates 2015-2016, and would like to report progress. Mr. Speaker, I move that the report of Committee of the Whole be concurred with.
Thank you. Do we have a seconder to the motion? Mr. Beaulieu.
---Carried
Orders of the day for Monday, February 9, 2015, at 1:30 p.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
Replies to Opening Address
Replies to Budget 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
First Reading of Bills
Bill 44, An Act to Amend the Hospital Insurance and Health and Social Services Administration Act
Second Reading of Bills
Bill 43, An Act to Amend the Borrowing Authorization Act
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters
Tabled Document 188-17(5), NWT Main Estimates 2015-2016
Bill 38, An Act to Amend the Jury Act
Bill 41, An Act to Amend the Partnership 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 Monday, February 9th, at 1:30 p.m.
---ADJOURNMENT
The House adjourned at 1:58 p.m.
