Mr. Speaker, communities have worked with the RCMP to develop policing priorities and action plans that designate specific priorities to make our communities safer. I would like to share with Members how this collaboration is making a difference in our communities.
Stopping bootlegging and stemming the inflow of prohibited liquor is a main focus for many communities. This priority is very important, especially around Christmas, holidays and other community events. It requires active participation by everyone, including community members and leaders, RCMP and partners, to combat bootlegging and maintain healthy homes and communities.
In Deline, strong partnerships between the RCMP, citizens and community leaders recently led to successful initiatives including check stops and investigations. These resulted in a seizure of a significant amount of alcohol: in December, a total of 67 bottles of vodka, 51 cans of beer and two bottles of wine. Charges were subsequently laid under the Deline Liquor Restriction Regulations.
However, it wasn’t all about punitive activities. In addition to enhanced law enforcement, the community of Deline hosted cultural activities with RCMP participation throughout the holiday season. Their aim was to help promote sobriety and safer, healthier choices. The results are clear. In December 2014 there was a 32 percent reduction in the number of calls to the RCMP for service compared to December 2013.
Other communities have seen similar successes. Fort Resolution saw charges laid for a seizure in December totaling 73 bottles of liquor, and Fort Good Hope had 51 bottles confiscated in one seizure. Each of these communities saw positive change for December as a result of these actions.
If you have information about any illegal activity affecting your community, speak with your local RCMP. You can also call Crime Stoppers. Crime Stoppers is safe and anonymous and will get your information to the people who can help to make positive change happen.
As you can see from these examples, each of us is able to have an impact and make a difference when we work together to build safer homes and communities. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Honourable Premier, Mr. McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I wish to advise Members that the Honourable Glen Abernethy will be absent from the House today due to illness. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Like most MLAs, many of us spend a large portion of our time assisting our residents with affordable housing situations. For the most part we find solutions but, sadly, there is still much disappointment for our most vulnerable in society. This has prompted me to speak today about what I think should be a basic human right. That right, Mr. Speaker, is the right to shelter.
There is nothing more colonial in our modern-day history than the way a number of bureaucrats and politicians in Ottawa decide on budgets for our nation’s housing crisis. Sadly, with federal CMHC funding declining to zero in the next 23 years, provinces and territories are left struggling to fill the void of affordability, adequacy, quality and homelessness. In essence, housing has become the real orphan of public policy in Canada and the North is not immune.
With our small population base and our inability to increase own-source revenues, this state of dependency is further cast into despair of resentment and dysfunction in seeking resolution to the question many of us ask: Do we have the power and the means to address the challenges of housing in our foreseeable future? Many are optimistic. I myself am very skeptical.
You see, this download of responsibility has created nothing more than a crisis of governance that provincial, territorial and Aboriginal governments share. None of these entities have the means to address this issue alone, even with the best of intentions and collaboration. Dysfunction is imminent.
It’s time, with 2015 being the year of elections at all levels, I ask citizens to address these challenges in the voters booth by asking and seeking clarity in the way we divide the fiscal pie, to ensure that the proper revenue streams are going to the right orders of government and to make sure the housing crisis is deserving of a proper transparency and accountability its citizens want and need.
We can learn from our history when it comes to our housing crisis, but we cannot afford to live in it any further. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. The honourable Member for Weledeh, Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We have a revenue problem. It’s no surprise that when the Minister of Finance was gathering views of NWT residents during his Budget Dialogue 2014, no one called for lower taxes. Indeed, some suggested increasing revenues through smarter taxation and improved royalties.
The need for investment in sustainable energy infrastructure, home retrofits, early childhood education, adequate housing, job training and addictions is obvious. Expenses are going up. How can we address this need? Shifting to a smarter tax approach is a good start.
Reducing taxes on low and middle income earners balanced by slightly higher ones for high income earners would help with cost of living, attracting new residents and retaining current ones, both yielding federal transfer revenues.
Sin taxes are a natural target and we’ve acted on these for tobacco and alcohol, but let’s recognize that the definition of “sin” includes pollution, and start making polluters pay instead of blindly accepting these health and environment costs with no ability to pay.
With no revisions since 1997, the NWT’s transportation fuel taxes are significantly below the national average, yet fossil fuel prices have gone through the roof since then. We don’t even tax a penny on natural gas and propane. Economists have shown that, done smartly, establishing a price on pollution, including carbon, would help us to capture industry innovation and reduce cost of living while improving our job numbers with other benefits.
Some corporations reduce northern tax payments by using creative accounting techniques and using commuting labour from afar. A capital tax would help make sure they pay their fair share. Another untapped revenue source is a resource income tax, which could contribute to our Heritage Fund and help smooth out the boom and bust nature of our resource economy.
Hotel and airport departure taxes, common throughout Canada, are unlikely to affect tourism, considering their small proportion of overall travel costs.
While yearly increasing our subsidies to the extractive industry, the Minister was consulting with the public about our budget. In those consultations, people were clear in demanding more than the promise of a few jobs over the life of hugely profitable projects in exchange for our non-renewable resources.
Mr. Speaker, I seek unanimous consent to conclude my statement. Mahsi.
---Unanimous consent granted
A better balance is needed. The resources of the North belong to the people. They are valuable and they are being exploited with too little public benefit for owners of the resource.
A revenue tune-up is long overdue, but I acknowledge it will take courage to get it done. Mahsi.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Colleagues, before we go on today, I would like to welcome our honourable table officer and a man who needs no introduction here in the House, Mr. Anthony W.J. Whitford. Welcome back to the House today, Tony.
---Applause
The honourable Member for Deh Cho, Mr. Nadli.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today I’ve got the blues, but I want to tell you why that’s a good thing. Today I want to talk about LEDs. LED stands for light emitting diode, and these lights offer a way to replace old-fashioned incandescent lightbulbs and less efficient light sources.
LEDs light up the lives of NWT residents every day at home, school, work and while travelling, from household lightbulbs, televisions and laptop computers to vehicles, streetlights, runway lights at the airport in Lutselk’e and even Christmas lights.
Yes, I’ve got the LED blues. Each of these lights uses a unique blue LED chip. This chip forms the base for LEDs of many different colours. That’s what makes these lights different from other bulbs. LEDs use as much as 80 percent less energy and last up to three times longer than fluorescent bulbs and 10 times longer than incandescent.
In our thermal communities, relying on diesel for electricity, this kind of energy efficiency is even more important for residents’ wallets and for community savings. It’s also better for the environment.
Since January 2014, federal regulations have seen retailers required to sell alternatives to incandescent bulbs, often fluorescent lights. But LEDs are still an efficient, sensible option. Unlike some fluorescent bulbs, LEDs have no mercury. If you’re interested in making a switch, rebates are available through the Arctic Energy Alliance for up to $200 for people in diesel communities.
At the community level, I know that communities across the Territories are replacing costly, low-efficient streetlights with LEDs. The NWT Power Corporation estimates that this will cut costs in half. Changing a few lightbulbs may seem like a small thing, but every little step you can conserve energy helps reduce the load on diesel generators in our communities. That means lower fuel consumption, lower cost and better outcomes for our environment.
Today I want to thank the Members’ families and communities that are already making the switch to LEDs, but I hope I can encourage anyone who is still hesitant to come down to the house of blue lights too. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Nadli. Member for Nahendeh, Mr. Menicoche.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. As a small community MLA, in the past I have blasted Yellowknife, but today I want to commend them. I was pleased to see the City of Yellowknife address the needs of the homelessness with their Housing First initiative. They have developed a five-year strategy to deal with the homeless, especially with the youth.
In my Nahendeh riding and throughout the other regions of our NWT, there is a need to increase the amount of housing units and even homelessness shelter complexes, much like Yellowknife has planned. In Fort Simpson there are over 30 single people homeless and on the housing list waiting for units. There are individuals on that list that have been there for about seven years. As our young population ages and starts young families, they too are now looking for accommodations and places to live. There is a private market there, but one developer has about 12 to 14 units that are close to being condemned, and then where would those families go? Fort Simpson is a regional centre and people from the surrounding communities do migrate to Fort Simpson looking for work and also increasing the pressures for a place to live.
I have been in contact with the NWT Housing Corporation to work with the leadership of Fort Simpson in addressing this issue, also in finding a way to use their available programming and that of the Anti-Poverty Strategy to make an impact on increasing available public units and establishing a homelessness shelter.
Mr. Speaker, today I’m calling on our government and the Minister of the NWT Housing Corporation in offering all their resources in addressing this situation.
I will be asking questions later to the Minister responsible for the NWT Housing Corporation about our Homelessness Strategy and what resources we have to address these regional centre concerns. Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. Member for Inuvik Boot Lake, Mr. Moses.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. On November 18th I attended the budget dialogue in Inuvik where various concerns and recommendations were brought to the government in the Minister of Finance’s budget dialogue tour across the Northwest Territories. There was a big discussion around investment in renewable energy, and obviously Inuvik is going through a gas situation, and that was one of the big topics, and I’m glad to see that it was also reiterated in other regions with the high cost of living and energy that was put into the Taking Stock Budget Dialogue.
This government is working on, right now, passing a $1.6 billion budget. There is a big increase in the wages and the benefits that we do supply our employees. When I was going through the budget dialogues for the last three years, in 2012 one of the things that I noticed in the overarching themes was mention of duplication of programs. We do have organizations in the Northwest Territories that do programs on behalf of government and do really great work that help residents become healthier, become educated, become part of society, yet we still do some of those programs within our departments.
Yesterday, during some of our dialogue with one of the departments, we got around to talking about the Third-Party Accountability Framework and how this government is increasing the budget of two not-for-profit organizations in the Northwest Territories who do work on behalf of government, and found out that under this accountability framework the department actually went out and worked with these organizations to increase their wages and benefits, like we do with the employees for the Government of the Northwest Territories.
We still have numerous other not-for-profit organizations that have been running on the same budgets, the same wages and same salaries for years.
I will ask question to the Premier of this government on what he’s going to do to ensure that all not-for-profit organizations do come up to speed with the economy that we’re dealing with right now. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Moses. Member for Sahtu, Mr. Yakeleya.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I was going to speak about education in our small communities. In 2013 the Alberta Achievement Test results show that the Northwest Territories is not doing very well. Actually, this test is a measurement of our education system in the Northwest Territories, and when you look at it, the results are pretty glim and bleak in the small communities. We do have a commonality with the larger centres. When you look at the results from the small communities and larger centres like Yellowknife and Hay River and Inuvik and Smith, there’s a commonality that connects us, and that shows in the results of testing the grades 10 and 11 students. That’s where the results show that the students dip below the percentage. It goes down.
There’s something happening for the students right across the North by grades 10 and 11. Attendance grades are up, then all of a sudden they all drop no matter where you are, Yellowknife, Smith, Hay River or in Colville Lake or Deline. The attendance drops and slightly peaks at Grade 11. So that’s the factor that shows our system isn’t well.
If you look at the other tests, our small communities are way below 50 percent. Students are operating below their grade level, meaning that they can’t comprehend. If you have a Grade 3 here in Yellowknife and a Grade 3 in Fort Good Hope, they’re not at the same level. They’re actually maybe at Grade 1 or Grade 2 at the best, so we’re failing them at that level.
I wanted to talk about what will it take to provide a quality education. The Minister talked about the four programs as being the foundation, and this is only for academics. There are students who do not want to be a doctor or a teacher; there are students who want to be in the trades. Like the Budget Dialogue says, we need to put screwdrivers and hammers in their hands to make a living.
So, I will ask the Minister, at the appropriate time, some questions on my statement. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. Member for Frame Lake, Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to start today by praising the Finance Minister for the initiative he has shown for holding budget dialogue events for the last three years, allowing NWT residents to comment on NWT budgets.
Over the three years the meetings have produced considerable feedback, but due to the timing of the forums, I’m not sure that feedback has actually been used. I have to wonder about the value for money of this initiative. Having said that, though, I’ve previously said that we can’t put a price on democracy. Consultation is a necessary evil of government.
This year there were 97 attendees at seven meetings held all over the NWT. Other years have had about the same number of participants, but what has this exercise cost us? Has it been worth the expense?
As I said, I’m unsure how the feedback has been used. In the report from the 2014 Budget Dialogue, the section called Next Steps states “The results of this process will be used to inform Legislative Assembly discussions in its February budget session and beyond.” The budget dialogues have been held in late fall, generally in November. Given that this year the 2015-16 budget was all but finalized by early December, I don’t know how the Minister used the results of the November 2014 dialogue to influence this year’s budget.
The same can be said of the report’s statement that “Other feedback pertaining to the government’s fiscal priorities and programs and services will be used in the 2015-16 budget.” I have to ask, what info was used and how did the budget change from November 2014 to today?
On another note, there’s significant mention in the Budget Dialogue report of the government’s strategy announced last year at this time, a strategy to grow our population. The report mentions a number of obstacles to achieving this goal and one of the most mentioned is government recruitment.
I want to thank the Minister for his commitment earlier this session to provide Members with concrete evidence of the government’s plan to get us 2,000 new residents, and I look forward to reviewing that plan.
In closing, although I question the value of this budget dialogue exercise and I hope the Minister will do a value for money audit on it, I compliment the Minister and department for holding these forums and giving residents a chance to express their views in person.
I’m hopeful the 18th Assembly will continue to seek out residents’ views on NWT budgets. Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. The Member for Hay River North, Mr. Bouchard.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I too will obviously be talking about the budget dialogue that the Minister of Finance continues to hold for the last three years.
I’m not sure if I’m really that confident in this budget dialogue process. Indications from this year are we had 97 people attend and we had 11 individuals or groups submit. Those are really low numbers and I’m not sure if we’re using this to direct or just as an excuse that we’ve consulted, because the numbers look crazy as far as I’m concerned. Thirty people from Yellowknife attended. Thirty people from a community that’s very large, the centre and our capital. That’s a very small number. In Hay River we had eight and I know Hay River had more interested; we had a conflict in meetings.
From this type of dialogue, the government moves forward with the budget. Like my colleague indicated, most of this is probably in stone already. So I’m just wondering if the Minister and his department really were hearing the public in this process, or did they have a preconceived notion? Because I know at each meeting, the meetings that I attended, the Minister and the staff had a presentation to make, had a discussion on the fiscal strategy and that we were limited to what we can do anyway. So I’m just wondering if there’s a preconceived notion of how this process is going to happen and the budget that was going to happen. So, are we just playing lip service to the general public?
I’ll have questions for the Minister about what he actually learned out there this year. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Bouchard. The Member for Mackenzie Delta, Mr. Blake.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I too will say a few words on the budget dialogue that has happened over the last three years. When this first began in one of the communities we even had a peaceful demonstration, which showed great support for the Inuvik-Tuk Highway Project and that is one of our priorities that we have undertaken over the last couple of years. Also with the Fibre Optic Link.
Those investments in the Beaufort-Delta region really needed to happen. Before that it was very slow up in the region, but now there’s a lot of jobs happening over the winter season, a lot of people working, a lot of happy families over Christmas.
Also, what I was hoping to say, and if this happens in the future, is come and visit the small communities, not just the regional centres. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Blake. Member for Hay River South, Mrs. Groenewegen.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Not to the substance of the budget dialogue but to the process, I would like to say that I applaud the Minister for his efforts to consult with people in the communities. It is always a debate, to dialogue or not to dialogue, to consult or not to consult, because we don’t have any way of realistically predicting how many people, how many constituents, how many people in the communities will actually be interested in taking the time to come out and speak with the government. Perhaps there could be some tweaking or adjusting done in terms of the timing of the consultation if people feel that the input could be put to better use if we had it earlier on in the process. So, those are things that we could think of.
But the fact is that for the last three years the Minister of Finance has taken his staff and he has gone out to the people in the Northwest Territories. If they did not avail themselves of that opportunity to have input, that is their choice, but we as a government have, I believe, a duty to consult and we made those efforts and we made that investment. So it’s hard now, after the fact, to say that we shouldn’t have done it because of poor turnout. As Mr. Bouchard said, in Hay River there was something conflicting that night. I didn’t even make it to the budget dialogue that night as there was something else going on in town, but I can’t remember what it was.
Mr. Speaker, I would like to also say that for myself as a part of this government, I am happy to have someone like Mr. Miltenberger in the position of Minister of Finance. That is not an easy job, I can tell you that I’ve been here as long as he has and I could not do that job. It is something that after the number of years that he’s been doing that job… I was saying to his brother at the airport the other day, that Michael – oh, I should say Mr. Miltenberger – almost makes the job look easy. But I know it is not easy and it is leading a team, and we as a government have credibility when we speak to our counterparts and our other Ministers across this country when that portfolio is handled by someone who has the ability to do it well. So I would like to thank him for his years as Finance Minister and say a job well done. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. Member for Yellowknife Centre, Mr. Hawkins.
Mr. Speaker, once again I want to talk about the problems families are facing with their power bills and how they relate to the cost of living. So, what better area to focus in on today than the subject of power companies having specifically tuned to their franchise purchase agreements with the communities in the North?
Families taking care of families matters to me most, and that’s something I think most of us know every day here, is we worry about our constituents and we don’t lose sight of that. So, keeping that in mind, I’ve been looking at the franchise agreement process, and what I’m noticing is franchise agreements can easily be described as, or even somewhat compared to, sole-source negotiated contracts. In fact, the similarities are so close I’m not sure anyone can really tell the difference between them. So if a person isn’t a contract expert or certainly an administrator, I don’t think they can tell the difference.
So now that we’re starting to put our finger on the problem in the right way, looking at it with the right eyes, whose interest is being served? Well, let me draw the House’s attention to a particularly great Member’s statement made some time ago here that puts the finger on the problem. It was a statement that drew the attention of the Cabinet’s increasing practice of awarding lucrative contracts without any competition. So, I quote the Member of the day: “I’m not suggesting that the people who have received these contracts are not competent. I’m not suggesting that they’re not offering a fair price. What I’m saying is that there’s no way to be sure of either of these things if we do not use a competitive process like a tender or an RFP. This is particularly true when we are sole sourcing contracts to individuals with very close ties to government.” Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the Member, MLA Ramsay, for that particular quote and passage provided on February 23, 2010.
What the issue really comes down to is we need to find ways to create a competitive environment that helps drive down the cost of power for Northerners so we can afford to live here, because the cupidity of these sole-source contracts are so aggressively sought after, people dare not let them go.
However, if we cannot create an environment of a robust competition, then we simply need to have the courage to break up the monopoly, because the Power Corp Minister said quite nicely the other day, this is an “essential” service. We must find a way to protect the public’s interest. That’s why we’re here. That’s what we should be fighting for. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. Item 4, returns to oral questions. Item 5, recognition of visitors in the gallery. I’d like to welcome everybody in the public gallery. Thank you for taking an interest in our proceedings here today.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to follow up on my Member’s statement today with questions to the Minister of Finance. This government definitely needs increased revenues if it’s to shift to a sustainable foundation and continue providing a sufficient level of services and programs to people it serves. We’ve heard of a plan to attract 2,000 new souls to the North. To date, we have seen neither the plan nor the souls.
The global economy is, understandably, stalled and our big investments in giant infrastructure provide little economic return. Five percent on $2 billion worth of diamonds exported from the NWT seems too little.
What real opportunities for increased revenue is the Minister of Finance pursuing? Mahsi.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. The honourable Minister of Finance, Mr. Miltenberger.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. One quick word about the diamond mines. We have a GDP of about $3.6 billion a year. Of that, half of that comes from the diamond mines. So when you look what they pay in royalties, but you have to combine that with all the money and value added that comes into the territory, that if we didn’t have those diamond mines and the $1.6 billion or so that they contribute to our economy, we’d be having a considerably more difficult conversation in this House.
The approach that we are taking in an area that has some of the highest costs of living in the country is to look at trying to build the strategic infrastructure that’s going to help create the conditions and provide the tools for continued economic growth that will expand our tax base as a result. I point to things like the $80 million commitment to put in the Fibre Optic Link which, if it holds true as to what happened in Kiruna, Sweden, we’ll see over the years an added value to the community of Inuvik of hopefully over $100 million a year. If we get good at it, the value added in terms of jobs could be anywhere in the neighbourhood of 400 jobs, if Kiruna, Sweden, is any indication.
It’s that kind of investment that we see as where we want to put our attention and invest our money, as opposed to at this point looking at expanding the taxes on Northerners. Thank you.
I think the fibre optic line is a good project and probably our best and, unfortunately, our only example. The 400 jobs the Minister speaks of are obviously far beyond any estimates I’ve seen provided by Cabinet, but I do support that project.
Obviously, the GDP that the Minister mentions is a false measure. It has been well recognized as a false measure. We know that over half a billion dollars, the Minister tells me, in wages are being sent out of the Northwest Territories. That all goes to the GDP, right? So how real is that?
One possible enticement for people who might be considering a move to the NWT, though, and a reason for those already here to remain, would be lower income taxes on low and middle income brackets. There are many aspects of this that would have to be examined, but the Minister seems to write this off out of hand.
How has the Minister considered this possibility in a plan to attract new residents and their intended transfer payments? Mahsi.
We’re looking at our initiative, as noted by the Member, where we’ve committed to provide an actual formal strategy that links together all the pieces that we’re doing on our 2,000 folks into the territory in now four years. We see that as, once again, a way where we can bring people into the territory.
The issue of changing the tax rates, more taxes on the higher income, lowering it on the lower incomes, we haven’t. I’ve made a decision, we’ve made a decision that we want to focus on building the tax base. So we haven’t spent a lot of time looking at how much we would need to raise the taxes on the high income, lower them on the lower and middle income. If it’s to be revenue neutral, that’s one thing. If it’s to put a whole bunch of new revenue in the pockets of the government so that we can spend it on other needs, then I would think that would be a fairly significant increase. We’ve tried over the years to raise our corporate taxes. We raised them up to 14 percent. I think that lasted about a year. We’ve quickly changed back to a more competitive rate as there was an absolute flood of equity and investment out of the Northwest Territories to file their taxes in other jurisdictions where the rates were more competitive. So it’s a very delicate balance. Thank you.
Obviously, the Minister has got a hope and a prayer for revenues, but I think we need a little more than that. You know, the hope that people are going to move here because we want them to move here is not going to get us what we’re looking for. We need some real action on revenue. Increasing taxes on bad behaviours, or sin taxes they’re called, are always popular and we’ve done a little bit of that. The increased revenue is useful and any decreased demand on costs of the bad behaviour is welcome.
The inclusion of fossil fuel use for energy generation and transportation could be considered in this light. When was the last time this House reviewed the Petroleum Products Act, and how will the Minister go after this potential opportunity? Mahsi.
