Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are addressed to the Minister of Finance. In the last month or six weeks or so, the Minister and his staff have been travelling throughout the NWT and doing budget consultations. I think they have been very well received in the centres where they were held. I agree that it was a good move for the department and the Minister to take the budget discussion show on the road, so to speak.
Over the number of presentations and discussions that have been held, there have been remarks by the media, there have been remarks by the Minister, they have talked about how the input may or may not be used from these budget consultations. On the part of the Minister and on the part of the department, what is his intent in using the input from these various consultations relative to the 2013-14 operations budget? Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. The Minister of Finance, Mr. Miltenberger.
Thank you. This has been an interesting exercise and there’s a number of key perspectives that we were looking for. We wanted feedback from the people of the Northwest Territories. We want to see what kind of responses we can get in terms of the things we’re now doing, which in this case confirm the focus that this Assembly has, for example, on prevention and the need to put more money into prevention, the need to sort out red tape, duplication program overlap, the need to look at how we add more money to our infrastructure budget. The other big issue is, of course, the support for sustainable development and make sure we have processes that are as supportive as possible to business.
So as an Assembly we are engaged in a lot of those issues already and it was corroborating support for the fact that this Legislature is fairly well tuned into the needs of their constituents. We also heard a number of very specific suggestions that we’re going to look at as we do the budget and fine-tune the main estimates and bring back to committee and to the MLAs to look at. So it was reinforcement that, in many cases, we’re on the right track.
We have to always do more and there are some specific suggestions that were given to us in a host of areas that we’re going to look at in terms of possible inclusion, if not in this budget, in subsequent budgets. Thank you.
Thank you to the Minister. I attended the discussion and the presentation in Yellowknife and I found it very interesting, and the Minister is right that there were some interesting discussions and some interesting ideas that were brought up there. One of the things that was mentioned at the meeting here in Yellowknife was that there was no reference at all to revenue in the budget presentation, and in the documents and in the discussions that were held that night. So I’d like to ask the Minister if he can explain why there was no discussion and no consideration of new revenues in the budget at these budget discussions. Thank you.
Thank you. In fact, at every one of the seven communities where we had meetings, somewhere during the course of the evening we talked about the new revenues that are going to come, and that in our case they are tied most immediately to devolution, that we were not considering tax increases at this juncture, given the economic circumstance and fragility of the world economic landscape. So we’ve indicated that next time, and we’ve heard some other requests, as well, for full disclosure of all the budget numbers laid out more in keeping with the main estimates. So we heard a number of issues in terms of the information requested that we will look at speaking to the next go-around when we do this next year. So the revenue piece will be put out there as well.
This particular initial go-around was to give people a sense of the fiscal constraints we’re operating under and the decisions we have to make if we want to move money between program areas if there’s enhancement required. Thank you.
Thank you to the Minister for the explanation. I have to say that I was fully expecting, and I wasn’t disappointed, that he brought up devolution and the money that we’re going to get from devolution. It’s unfortunate but, in my mind, it seems that’s the money that we’re getting from devolution is going to be the one item that is going to solve all of our problems.
The Minister mentioned that revenue was discussed at almost every one of the meetings, and I would like to say that there have been two roundtables on budget and finance that have been held over the last four or five years, I guess three or four years, and those roundtables in the summary both suggested that the government should look at new revenue sources. The Minister is suggesting we don’t need to do that, I think he’s suggesting we don’t need to do that because we’ve got devolution money coming.
So I’d like to ask the Minister, we’ve had recommendations from roundtables to look at revenue options, why have we not done that? Thank you.
Thank you. What I did say was that we are of the mind, as a government, that it’s not an appropriate time to be adding new tax burdens onto Northerners, that we struggle with cost of living issues in all of our communities, that it’s a challenge to businesses as well. So what we want to foster is a strong economy, which will give us more revenue as opposed to us as a government putting more taxes out there. So our focus has been on trying to put in infrastructure, look at how we do business to be as supportive as possible in an economically and environmentally sustainable way to encourage business. It’s to focus on alternative energies, it’s to focus on cutting our costs as a government and cutting the costs of living for the people in the communities. So those are all tied to having a strong economy and those will all give us revenue, but not through the tax man reaching into the pockets of our struggling Northerners to take more money out. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Final, short supplementary, Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and thanks to the Minister for his comments. I have to respectfully disagree. I don’t think that we have to raise revenues through taxes. There are other options that are available to us, and some of those options were suggested in the summaries from the roundtable.
So I’d like to know from the Minister, other than looking at taxes, has the department looked at other options to increase our revenue sources, such as resource rents, for instance. Thank you.
Thank you. We haven’t looked at resource rents per se. What we are looking at and what we’ve tried to invest money in over the years is, for example, to increase the amount of immigration into the Northwest Territories. Right now our population is either static or, in some cases, shrinking marginally, which has a significant negative effect on our Territorial Formula Financing Agreement. So in order to do that, we have to make sure we have a strong economy with jobs, and we have to work with all the groups and communities on things like affordable housing and the services that will attract people into the North. So those are the areas of improving our economy that we’re looking at that will very directly impact the bottom line of the Northwest Territories and all Northerners. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. The Member for Inuvik Boot Lake, Mr. Moses.
