Thank you, Madam Premier. Member for Hay River South.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I'll take that as a yes, and thank you.
All right. Are there any further questions on "Make strategic infrastructure investments that connect communities, expand the economy, or reduce the cost of living?" Member for Frame Lake.
Thanks, Madam Chair. I'm not going back to the "big toys for big boys." I'm going to go on to the broadband part of the table. I see that one of the items here is to complete the Inuvik to Tuktoyaktuk fibre line. That's great, but what about linking the communities that the fibre link line already passes by to it, and providing distributions systems in communities that it already goes by? Why is that not part of the work that should be done here? Thanks, Madam Chair.
Thank you, Member for Frame Lake. Madam Premier.
Thank you, Madam Chair. Some of the difficulty with this is that actually putting the broadband is not a GNWT project on its own. In fact, we do not have the capacity to do that. We need the federal government at the table, but we also need private enterprise at the table. Inuvik to Tuktoyaktuk, it's on the books already. The other ones might not be, and so it's a matter of developing those partnerships and those relationships with our Internet provider, as well. It would be inappropriate to put actions in a mandate when we do not have firm commitments on things that are outside of our control. This mandate should be based on what we know or what is in our control. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you, Madam Premier. Member for Frame Lake.
Thanks, Madam Chair. I guess I'll be pretty blunt here. This is another example of a P3 gone wild, where the promise was made, when the Mackenzie Valley fibre link was built as a P3, that this was going to speed up access for all of our communities along the link and that all of the communities down the Mackenzie Valley would have access to high-speed Internet. It has not happened. I guess the Premier is saying that this is a really a private sector responsibility. Then it was a poorly designed P3 that only developed a fibre link that goes by communities and does not connect them. I see the Premier shaking her head. She actually agrees with me. That is great.
What are we going to do to make sure that, when a fibre link line is completed to Tuktoyaktuk, they do not have a distribution system that they're not going to get -- what are the benefits to Tuktoyaktuk if there is no distribution system at the end of the fibre link? Is there a plan to have distribution system in Tuktoyaktuk, and then what about the other communities? I am not pitting communities against communities, but if we are going to make a promise that we are going to build broadband networks and improve speeds and all this kind of thing, you can't just build the line and not have a distribution system in the communities. What have we learned from the first time around with this so that we do not repeat the mistake again and leave Tuktoyaktuk stranded at the end of the fibre link? Thanks, Madam Chair.
Thank you, Member for Frame Lake. Madam Premier.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I have no problem admitting my weaknesses. I think I have done as much as I can talking about Internet services for somebody who does not even watch TV, and so, in that case, I will turn it over to someone who might know more, the Minister of Finance. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Minister of Finance.
Thank you, Madam Chair. The installation of the fibre line alongside areas, for example, the Inuvik to Tuktoyaktuk Highway, where there is a highway that you can utilize at the same time, bringing the fibre into the community makes it easier and makes it more possible for independent service providers to come in and provide that link into homes. That said, what it's doing for the communities is allowing opportunities to bring the fibre into schools, to bring the fibre into health centres, to bring the fibre into the GNWT offices, for example, the GSO offices.
While it's not a perfect solution to providing it into the homes, it certainly is providing better services in those communities. That said, the GNWT is actively working with Northwestel to support their application through CRTC for an opportunity to leverage some more funding from the federal government, to actually then turn around and have those fibres and to improve connectivity into houses. Is it a perfect solution, where I can promise, sort of, milk and bread in every home, the equivalent in a fibre line? I can't.
At the same time, there is active work happening right now so that the fibre lines are going into the communities that would not have had them at all, and then there would be absolutely no chance of any private service provider putting the line down all the way between Inuvik and Tuktoyaktuk. I think, at this point, the intention is to continue to do that, to take opportunities where they are available on road systems or otherwise, and to get the fibre as close as we can or to work with those service providers, whether it's on fibre or whether it's on low-orbit satellites, to make sure we are achieving the goal of having all communities on a certain base level of Internet connectivity.
Thank you, Minister of Finance. Member for Frame Lake.
Thanks, Madam Chair. Yes, I have been asking for this plan for a number of years. I asked for it in the last Assembly. I will be asking again for it. Where is the plan to have distribution systems in all of our communities for the fibre link, whether it's the ones that are already passed by now or Tuktoyaktuk if we are going to build it to Tuktoyaktuk? That is a heads-up notice. I will keep asking about this. Look, I want this built to Tuktoyaktuk, but I don't want the community to be stranded at the end of the day.
I have questions about the next one, about modernizing NWT airport infrastructure. I am wondering whether Yellowknife is on this list. It does not appear to be in any way, so what about extending the runway in Yellowknife so that we could have direct charters from Europe or Asia, as Whitehorse enjoys? Where is that in the priorities or the action items here, because it does not seem to be listed anywhere? Thanks, Madam Chair.
Thank you, Member for Frame Lake. Madam Premier.
Madam Chair, if you can ask the Minister of ITI?
Thank you. Minister of Infrastructure.
I can get back to you with the details. However, my understanding is we can land significant-sized airplanes on the Yellowknife runway, so I would have to get back to you on that. However, the Yellowknife airport has a master plan. Sorry, I will have to get back to the Member. I am being reminded of my protocols.
There is a Yellowknife airport master plan. If you'll just bear with me to let me find the correct page here, I can give you some details on that. The Yellowknife airport is being looked at. Oh, where did I lose it here? It's being looked at for its own capacity and its own merits outside of the remainder of our airports, so there are going to be changes coming there to better expand for tourism opportunities. Again, I am just trying to -- I have literally lost sight of it here. I think my infrastructure binder is the biggest thing ever. Sorry, one second here.
The airport master plan work is ongoing, and it will be completed in early 2020. They are doing related background technical studies right now as well as market and economic analyses studies, which all have been completed and are being reviewed. The draft airport plan will be shared with Members for their input and comment once it is completed in the spring of 2020, so I imagine that, as the tourism people move forward with our tourism strategies, they are very much interested in discussing or being involved with the airport plan so that it can accommodate any future endeavours we would like to take in tourism.
Thank you, Minister of Infrastructure. All right, so I just want to remind the Members to just direct your conversation through me, just so we can get the microphone, and, if you can, say "thank you" when you are at the end, just so that way I know you are done and I can redirect. Member for Nunakput.
Thank you, Madam Chair. Just in regard to the fibre optic line, I am just going to rant here. It's not for you, Madam Premier, but it's just like a vacuum cleaner here. Everything comes here. Then, whatever falls off the table, small communities will get it. That is the way everything pretty much works here, by the sounds of it.
Fibre optic will bring so much for the school and health centre. Cell service, maybe Northwestel will give cell service for the Inuvik to Tuktoyaktuk Highway. Maybe they will get an ambulance. There is no ambulance, so if somebody gets hurt on the highway, you are a hundred-and-some kilometres out; no one is going to come. Somebody will pick you up with a pickup.
There are so many issues that we do have in our small communities, but we make do with what we have got with government downloading, and that is what it comes to. Our community governments are so stretched right now that, when they are providing services, the dollars are stretched for busing, for youth, for lunches, everything. Communities are left behind here. I am sick of it, Madam Chair. You always say "33 communities," "33 communities." Start acting like there are 33 communities and not just one of the bigger centers. You have to take care of everybody.
Federal government gives us $29,500 per person per year. Maybe, I think it is up to $34,000 a year now. Provide service for them. You are not providing service for my people that I represent in the community. You are not. I have houses that, when the wind blows, the wind goes right through the damn house, Madam Chair. I have mould. I have people being sick. I have health issues, concerns for the people who I represent who were an afterthought. That is the way it feels. I have all the respect in the world for my colleague. Something like this small, probably $400,000 or $500,000, where it is a drop in the bucket that they are going to question. Then we could find $4.5, $5 million for the Stanton Territorial Hospital. I know it is a hospital, but they find money for the bigger projects in Yellowknife, not for the communities. Communities are suffering. People are hungry. Get jobs. We need jobs. Please and thank you. Thank you.
Thank you, Member for Nunakput. Would the Premier like to respond?
Thank you, Madam Chair. I appreciate the comments, and I agree. Especially as Cabinet, we have a responsibility to 33 communities, not one, not our own ridings. I have said that to all of my Ministers. Every one of them knows that we have 33 communities. I have always said that, if we support the smaller communities, the bigger communities benefit from it. I hope that the Member won't take that for all Members in this House. Even the Members from the bigger ridings would agree that they don't think about the smaller communities. I take the point that we all need to think about them. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Are there any further questions to "Make strategic infrastructure investments that connect communities, expand the economy, or reduce the cost of living"? Member for Hay River South.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I just want to talk about the modernization of the NWT airport infrastructure. I am concerned, and if MLA Martselos was here, she'd probably be speaking on this, as well. The airport in Smith was narrowed. My concern is that if we are going to do it to one, they may pick on Hay River or they may pick on somebody else. To me, what we are trying to do is make the North more acceptably accessible. I have lived here for so long; I see where we take stuff away. Once we do that, we never get it back. That scares me when we look at these type of things, and it wasn't us that did it. It was the past group, but we can change that. I think that when we are making decisions, we have to kind of look forward, as well.
Airports are important. The cost of flying out of any community, except for Yellowknife, is pretty expensive. What I would ask this government to do is to really consider when looking at airports or downsizing or trying to do any of that, look at the bigger picture and look forward, because it is important, even with Fort Smith. At the end of the day, we just narrowed that thing, it probably wouldn't be too much to widen it again. That should be a consideration. It is not just with the airports. It is with everything else. Looks like the Minister of ITI would like to comment. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you, Member for Hay River South. Minister for ITI.
Technically, Infrastructure. I would like to clarify that nothing has been taken away from the runway in Fort Smith, and the functionality of the airport is exactly as it was prior to the narrowing. Cell phones used to be this big. Now they are this big. Getting smaller does not mean anything has been reduced in functionality. Should anybody feel that the Fort Smith airport is not performing as it needs to, including being able to land 737s, I would encourage them to have the airlines raise that safety concern through the safety protocols under Transport Canada. I don't mean to belabour that point. However, there has been nothing taken away from the Fort Smith airport in terms of functionality. It purely was a physical narrowing that then allowed us to access funding for resurfacing.
I completely agree with the Member. One of the reasons that I ran for this position was to be more proactive in the government and looking at things down the line, which we need to balance with, "Do we have the money to do that?" I get that there is always going to be the balance we have to play of, "How much money do we have for a project, and how much can we build in the capacity for expected growth?" I can say yes to the Member that I do commit to trying to be more forward-thinking with any projects that come under my departments and ensuring that we look to the future and not just "What do we need right now?" Thank you.
Thank you, Minister. Hay River South
Thank you, Madam Chair. The functionality of the airport, we will deal with Fort Smith, is still there, but I disagree with the Minister in saying nothing was taken away. There was something taken away. There was a section on both sides taken away. It was narrowed. I am glad that she is saying that there will be some more forward thinking and some thought put into any decisions made with respect to whether it is runways or anything else that we are looking at. Just a comment. Thank you.
Thank you, Member for Hay River South. As it was just a comment, I am going to ask if there are any further questions to "Make strategic infrastructure investments that connect communities, expand the economy, or reduce the cost of living." Seeing there are none, we will move on to page 19.
Due to the agreement that we made the last sitting for the mandate, I am going to limit to one round of questions per. Get your questions in order. You have 10 minutes for one round per priority. We are moving to page 19, "Increase economic diversification by supporting growth in non-extractive sectors and setting regional diversification targets." Questions. Member for Yellowknife North.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I would like to speak to the mandate commitment here, "Encourage entrepreneurship by reducing red tape and regulatory burdens on small businesses." I am very happy to see that we kind of snuck this in under this one. I believe every ITI Minister for the last few years has committed to this. There is actually a measurement for red tape. The Canadian Federation of Independent Business provides a Red Tape Report Card. The Northwest Territories has received an F on that report card every single year. Then the 2020 one came out, and we weren't even on it. They just seemed to remove us from the report card, we were doing so bad.
I believe what is happened is, the GNWT, we love passing regulations, and we keep expanding. We give no thought to implementation or whether we have the resources to enforce them. Consistently, I am having constituent issues of people who are just ignoring the law because the process is so burdensome, and there aren't people on the other side to help guide it through that. My question is here: when we are committed to reducing red tape, the first step to meaningfully eliminate red tape is to measure it. The Canadian Federation of Independent Business, step one, asks that a government measure the total amount of regulations, measures what the processes look like. Are we committed to public measurement of red tape? Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you, Member for Yellowknife North. Madam Premier.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I am being careful what we are promising. I think what we need to do is: the policies or the legislation that is on the plate, for example, the Business Incentive Policy, the Northern Manufacturing Policy, absolutely, we should be doing that analysis. I have never heard of this, but I wrote it down, the Canadian Federation of Independent Business. I am going to be looking at it myself. However, to do right across the whole board, I do not think that would be realistic at this point, but we can commit to doing it for the ones that we are looking at changing. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you, Madam Premier. Member for Yellowknife North.
Thank you. I went on a bit of a rant there and started speaking very fast and passionately. I am very passionate about cutting red tape in this government. I would just like a commitment from the Premier to ask her department or whoever is responsible ultimately for this department -- I believe it's ITI and Finance -- to look at the qualifications set out by the Canadian Federation of Independent Businesses and see if maybe we can improve our "F" that we get every year. Thank you.
Thank you, Member for Yellowknife North. Madam Premier.
Thank you, Madam Chair. What I will commit to is that I have given direction to the Minister of Finance and the Minister of ITI to check the Canadian Federation of Independent Businesses to look at a measurement. That saves me doing it. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you, Madam Premier. Member for Hay River South.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I guess, when I look at this, the first point there of working with community governments to identify and advance economic opportunities, there is an area there and how we will do it. There is job creation, right there, and that is job creation probably without -- you don't need trades, and you probably don't really need an education. It's basically for anybody. I think that that's an area that this government has to really grasp and run with right off the bat here. We can't wait.
With respect to the agricultural side, I talked to people this last weekend in Hay River, and they would like to do something, but they can't. They can't. They don't have access to land. They have good ideas. They are trying to do stuff. They are stymied by the bureaucracy, and we have to change that. We have to give direction to the bureaucrats in the regions that they have to be positive. They have to be willing to say yes more than they say no. If we don't do that, we are not going to get anywhere.
When I look at this, I look at agriculture, I look at the fisheries, I look at forestry, all the areas around that would positively impact the South Slave. I am wondering and I would ask the Premier: what is this government going to do to push this forward as quickly as possible? Thank you.
Thank you, Member for Hay River South. Madam Premier.
Thank you, Madam Chair. Some of the Indigenous governments are already on this and they are already doing their work, so it's a matter of bringing them all together and making sure that every single region has an economic plan, because some Indigenous governments have more capacity than other Indigenous governments to be able to do this work. We need to make sure that we are there to support them. How soon it gets done, we have already been talking to the Indigenous governments. Like I said, I phoned all of the ones that are in the intergovernmental council already. I have met four or five with bilaterals, with Ministers. We are already putting this on the table and stating that it's going to happen, that we want to support them with it.
Another thing that we have talked about doing is, we have to be careful. What I did realize since I became elected is that Indigenous governments do not have enough capacity as it is, as well. When I look at it, I gave direction to all of my Ministers to engage stakeholders as much as possible, so now we are going to engage them on our education, on our healthcare, on our housing projects, on our lands project, on our justice services. At some point, do they have the capacity?
We have been talking not only about their regional economic plans, but capacity building, and we do have a week-long forum that we actually address these issues. We are trying to be as proactive as possible to address all of the issues but also support the Indigenous governments so that they can actually do the work that we all need to do together. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you, Madam Premier. Member for Hay River South.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I guess it's not just Indigenous governments, but it's others, as well, that are already doing work on the ground, and whether it's support from this government for the bureaucracy, they are just not getting it. They get stymied, and a lot of times it comes down to personalities, and we can't operate like that. We have to operate fairly. This government has to be fair. If there are rules and procedures and there is legislation, let's follow it. If it's wrong, then let's change it, but we have to be fair with everybody. We cannot be, "Well, I don't like you," or whatever, or, "I don't like what you are doing. Here's my pet project." I have seen that happen over the years, and it's got to change at some point, and I am hoping this government is where it's going to change. If we have to change people out, I have got no problem with that, as well. We have done it already, and just keep on going.
I guess, at the end of the day, I don't want to have more meetings. What I would like to see for the Hay River region, for instance, the South Slave, I would like to see the ITI Minister come to Hay River and take her around and talk to each of the businesses there, agricultural, fishery. I know she committed to it, and I know she will do it. Hopefully, she can commit right now before she figures out what I said. Thank you.
Madam Premier.
Thank you. I believe that the Member wanted the Minister of ITI to go into Hay River and meet with businesses and things, so I am going to say that she will do that. The other thing is that I do agree that they need to be fair. I agree that government employees are public servants; our job is to serve the public. However, you are absolutely right, it is about personalities, so we offer all kinds of cultural awareness, about customer service, you know, all kinds of training. The reality is that some people are kinder than other people, and, wisely, they do not give me the direction to be able to fire every single person in the Government of the Northwest Territories or we'd all be starting again. However, I agree. We are public servants. Our job is to serve the public, and so I am asking every government employee who is listening to this: please, your job is to provide proper service to people; do not forget that as you enter your workday. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you, Madam Premier. Member for Hay River South.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I just want to touch on tourism, as well. This last weekend, I had the opportunity to go down and take a look at a facility in Hay River, and there are a couple of them there. It's interesting because I go down there, and I know housing had gotten rid of these houses, quite a few of them there in an area called "Disneyland," because the houses were unfit for habitation. Well, they are all down there by the lake now as little chalets and cleaned up and beautiful and get rented out for whatever. There is really an opportunity for tourism in Hay River, but, again, they are having trouble with bureaucracy. They need our help. They need some funding, which we have, and what I am finding is that we have now the communities encroaching on ITI funding, and that should not be.
If the communities want funding, go to MACA. ITI should be for businesses and that's it in the NWT. I think we have got to be really careful that we do not start funding community governments when we should be funding businesses and providing them that support, because they are the ones out there. We do not want the communities competing against business, and that is happening. What I would ask, I guess, is for a commitment that the Department of ITI take a look at funding and make sure that there is something there that does not go to community governments; it goes to businesses only. Thank you.
Thank you, Member for Hay River South. Madam Premier.
Thank you, Madam Chair. Since the question was directed to the Minister of ITI, then I will ask the Minister of ITI to answer the question. Thank you.
Minister of ITI.
Thank you, Madam Chair. This is the first I've heard of that, so I will definitely commit to looking into that. I just also wanted to let you know that the department has just asked me to come to Hay River on the 23rd of March, so it looks like somebody was listening to the Member somewhere, and it sounds like a trip to Hay River is being planned sooner rather than later.
