Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to start off by saying to my colleagues, what legacy do you want to be remembered by? Of course, we have collectively, as an Assembly, started off this 17th Assembly with some very harmonious and ambitious tasks, projects and objectives. I’m extremely proud to be part of this legacy and I hope that the history will see the 17th as being remembered for the good that it’s brought to the people it serves.
So why do I find myself perplexed at Bill 43, a simple act that amends our borrowing authorization? Clearly, this House has debated much larger topics and those required more than $25 million as a price tag attached. So why is the Member for Range Lake so concerned with this bill that he feels the need to speak out in its dying minutes on the Order Paper? Because I have a voice. I have a voice of many who are concerned at the spending of this government, a government that has blindly gone into a spending agenda of epic proportion and whose line of credit has reached its end.
It doesn’t take much to understand the predicament that we face with our borrowing both in its long-term and indeed on its short-term merits today sends a message to those in public office and leaders that deal with our finances, that the situation we find ourselves is not only due to unforeseen acts of God or issues such as low water or extreme fires, but, moreover, the financial debt wall that we have before us is equally due to the lack of foresight, improper personal and corporate tax collection, the accelerating of large-scale projects without the Assembly vetting process and inappropriate promises to taxpayers circumventing the due process of the House.
This is now the second time during the life of this Assembly that we are being held accountable for our spending habits or, in this case, our poor habits. I say poor habits because it’s easy to borrow money. Ask anyone who gets a Visa card where the bank has no problem increasing your limit multiple times even though your earnings don’t change.
We went through this process not more than two years ago and the same government clearly articulated a need to increase our short-term borrowing from $175 million to the current $275 million today, a mere $100 million more capacity to deal with the ins and outs of running the business we call government.
Interestingly, today we heard from the Minister the use of the analogy of the Visa card. As I said, we have not really increased our revenues over the last couple of years and the outlook that we have for resource revenues is rather bleak. In fact, we have hard, marginal increases in our revenues in the last little bit and, in fact, this year alone we are destined to add a mere 0.5 percent increase over last year. When you balance our expenditure growth over this same period at a multiplier of more than four to one, it doesn’t take rocket science to see that this inverted proportion is going to hit your general ledger at some point in a form of poor cash flow. As I said, economics 101 and that’s why we’re here today.
So we have asked, many of us have asked and we continually ask why we have been spending the way we have. What is the logic behind each expenditure and what do these expenses do to our fiscal strategy and our overall fiscal health?
I am proud of my colleagues for the thoroughness of their financial oversight and their acuteness of detail in keeping this government accountable. However, today and throughout the process of Bill 43, I have not been thoroughly convinced that this expenditure increase was warranted. Today we are being asked by those in financial authority to trust them, and to trust them with very limited rationalization. This, Mr. Speaker, I cannot support.
I feel that we, Members of this House and the residents that we serve, are being held ransom at the deliberate hands of its creators and we are being asked to mop up this mess. For this reason alone I did not support the principle of the bill in committee and the reason I didn’t support this bill during the legislative process and the reason I’m not supporting it now.
I may not be able to stop this legislative process, but I can assure you, Mr. Speaker, and everyone in this room, we will remember this bill today as being the cipher in the first step of a series of epic borrowing increases never before seen by the NWT taxpayer.
May the residents forgive us for what we’re about to do.
Mr. Speaker, colleagues, I want to thank you for the opportunity to speak today on Bill 43. With that, Mr. Speaker, I will seek a recorded vote of third reading.
The Member has requested a recorded vote. All those in favour, please stand.
Mr. Miltenberger, Mr. Ramsay, Mr. McLeod – Inuvik Twin Lakes, Mrs. Groenewegen, Mr. Bouchard, Mr. Nadli, Mr. Hawkins, Ms. Bisaro, Mr. Moses, Mr. Yakeleya, Mr. Blake, Mr. Beaulieu. Mr. Abernethy.
All those opposed, please stand.
Mr. Dolynny.
All those abstaining, please stand. Those in favour, 12; against, one. The motion is carried.
---Carried
