Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m sorry that I didn’t get a chance to really conclude my Member’s statement today on the theme that I was going on and I really didn’t think it was fair to leave everybody hanging overnight. Also, as I mentioned earlier, tomorrow is Anti-Bullying Day, so I thought I’d better get my comments in today.
We’re coming up soon to the midway point for the 17th Legislative Assembly. We’re just a little past the midway point of this particular session. This is where everybody is tested during the budget session, where Ministers are put to the test as they appear with their witnesses before the Chamber, where Regular Members are put to the test with their tolerance and endurance, and sometimes frustration with some of the long hours and some of the issues that we all grapple with.
I’d just like to do a quick review of the folks that we chose at the beginning of the 17th Assembly. We went into TLC. We heard their comments. We heard their speeches. Some of them we knew, some of them we didn’t know as well, but we chose leadership from amongst us to go on the other side and take responsibility for departments. We entrusted them with that. Now we are coming up to the midway point, so I just wanted to go over a few of my observations today. These are purely my observations.
I’ll start at one end: Mr. Beaulieu. A very tough and challenging Department of Health and Social Services, one that covers a very broad spectrum of issues that are dear to people’s hearts. When we, as MLAs, have constituents come to us with issues, I would say the majority of our issues that I’m approached with as an MLA are somehow related to Health and Social Services. It’s a people department and it’s one that requires a lot of knowledge to get familiar with all of the issues. I appreciate that Mr. Beaulieu comes to us with a small community perspective. He did chair the Standing Committee on Social Programs in the last government, but he is a person that knows the real challenges that face people in their everyday lives, and he’s real. I mean, there have been some days here, but I think he has a ways to go before he matches my record of six days with Health and Social Services before standing committee, but…
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Record noted.
Yes, record noted. Thank you. But sometimes when, like, he’s so honest about it, he’s not a good poker player. Sometimes it’s becoming overwhelming and he says that I wish to do better and I strive to know more about the issues and give my colleagues a good answer. I appreciate the fact that he is very real. We all have a ways to go to learn all the topics.
Our Minister responsible for Public Works and Services and Human Resources, comes to us from a background in the public service. I find Mr. Abernethy very responsive. He’s a critical thinking person. You don’t have to say, “Do you know what I mean?” after you ask him a question, because you do know that he knows what you mean. I believe that he genuinely cares about the plight of our communities outside the capital. He has demonstrated that, and that is very comforting to me, for a Yellowknife MLA to be able to understand some of the challenges that we are facing in the communities and in the regional centres. We’ve kind of had a little thing going on this side of the House, where we just want to add at the end of every sentence “and the communities and regional centres,” because in our discussions in committee it comes up so often. I do appreciate Mr. Abernethy’s quick thinking and responsiveness to the issues, and I think that a Cabinet position suits him very well.
Mr. Miltenberger, my long-time colleague of almost 18 years now. I’ve given report cards on him before and I think I might have even used this phrase before, but again, in the 17th Assembly, the workhorse, with his eye on the fiscal restraint and responsibility of our Legislature. Undeniably, a very intelligent man. You know how the really smart kid in the class gets really bored with the others? Sometimes he has to be a little bit careful, that we need to catch up with him. Maybe it’s just a thing of being here so long, you’ve got so much, kind of, corporate knowledge. But with that knowledge, I think that Mr. Miltenberger is in an excellent position to be looking at these next two years for mentoring some of the folks who will be here after…
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Mentoring some of the folks that will be here after we’re gone. Now he says he’s coming back so…
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When the Drive for Five was still alive, I said don’t make me come back again, but anyway, here we are. I’d like to thank Mr. Miltenberger, because I do know that his motives are altruistic and I know that with the length of service he does have here, sometimes I tell people he could be… He’s making nothing because your pension can’t start until you actually retire, and I’m sure if he was in Fort Smith or pursuing his own aspirations right now, he would be probably making as much, if not more, money than he does sitting here as a Minister in our government. I know that his motives are good and he does genuinely care about the people of the North. He just has to sometimes understand that maybe we’re not all quite caught up to where he’s at and he needs to communicate with us.
Premier McLeod. Premier McLeod is probably the most understated achiever that I’ve ever met. If I’m doing something or have something on my mind, everybody’s got to know about it. Everybody around me is going to know about it, but Premier McLeod is not exactly a walking billboard for what he’s doing or what he’s accomplishing at any given time. Every time I hear about things in little bits and pieces, I’m amazed. I tell him that and I tell other people that. I’ll say it again in this House that the devolution file was one that I doubted I would see in my time as a politician in the Northwest Territories. I doubted I would see it get to this point. But through a culmination of events and the support of his staff he has around him, the support of his Cabinet, it seems like the stars have aligned for the Northwest Territories on the devolution file. But I do say that I don’t think it could have come to this point without the leadership of our Premier that we have here. I’d like to thank him.
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One thing that’s always been very curious to me is, after all those years in the senior levels of public service and having a front row seat to what goes on in this Legislature, that he actually wanted to come here. That kind of surprised me about him too. Again, from a small community perspective, when he does not forget his roots in the small communities, and that is something that, when we do talk to him about the challenges, he understands.
Next I have Minister Lafferty. Again, I’d like to thank Minister Lafferty for his genuine caring about education. For him, I believe, it’s not just an assignment. Like Health and Social Services, it is a big and very challenging department with many things to be accomplished, but we chip away at it. Mr. Lafferty is not as quick in his responses and in verbal dialogue as some, but he does take our issues seriously and to heart, and sometimes he processes them and, maybe a day or two later, comes back with what he’s had a chance to think about and process and talk to his senior staff about, and then has a response to us at that time.
He’s had some really good success on some really innovative things in education, and let me just mention a few of those. The residential school curriculum, which we just had a briefing on today, is something that is very new. No other government has ever spearheaded that and has ever been able to bring that along. The Aboriginal student achievement. I mean, how many years have we stood in this Legislature and said that we have to level the playing field, we have to bring Aboriginal students along, we have to affect those graduation rates that Aboriginal students are not as well represented in. Those were things that we wanted to effect change in. Also, with the revitalization of the education program. I’d like to thank Minister Lafferty for his work on that.
Minister David Ramsay. We were seatmates so we had the advantage. But I think that Minister Ramsay really wanted in the Cabinet, even in previous governments, but hadn’t quite made it there. But once he got there, I could see that he came into his realm and he’s a natural in that. He’s very enthusiastic about his issues and his departments, sometimes a little too enthusiastic, like the Inuvik-Tuk highway, but that’s another whole story. I do appreciate, very much, his intelligence and his responsiveness to the issues. And like Minister Abernethy, a Yellowknife… May I say this? It’s a long time from elections. It’s a long ways off, elections. But again, another Yellowknife Minister, like Mr. Abernethy, who, when he says he cares about decentralization and the sustainability and the viability of communities outside of Yellowknife, I believe that when he goes to the Cabinet table, he brings that message there. We have seen the results of that and I appreciate that very, very much about him.
Last but not least, our Minister Robert C. McLeod. Someone just said this morning, and I don’t think this is committee confidentiality, that the NWT Housing Corporation has never been in better shape than it is today. Housing is one of those departments, again, where you have to find that fine balance between understanding the issues that Northerners face but still be pragmatic about the realities of when government coddling ends and personal responsibility kicks in. That is something that takes walking the line.
We want to do good for our constituents, but at the same time, we don’t want to enable them not to take responsibility for themselves. So I do appreciate that common person, common sense, pragmatic approach that Minister Robert C. McLeod brings to his work in the Housing Corporation and in MACA as well. It’s obvious, from the work with his senior officials, that they work very well together and that they are there to see things get done.
I’m not used to having all this time. Sorry. I have to slow down a little bit.
As I started off saying earlier today, in consensus government maybe we need to think about the varied skills that we all bring to the table and how we bring that together to get the best results possible. No doubt we do have frustrating days at times, but this group of 19 is what we have to work with. Maybe it would be interesting to see what we could accomplish. The type of government we have is necessarily, at times, adversarial. Like I said, it’s that little hybrid of partisan politics that seems to creep in here, but it would be really good to see what we could accomplish together by encouraging each other. When we see things that could be done better or things that could be done differently, if we could find ways to communicate those in a way that’s encouraging, that is supportive both ways, that we can say that, and maybe somebody can see the way I’m doing my job and could offer critiquing or suggestions that would help me do my job.
At the end of the day, the work that we do here in this Chamber, and with our constituents, and in our offices and everything we do, is not about us, but it’s about the people of the Northwest Territories that we serve. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
