Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Now that we’ve been all nice and happy about devolution, now comes the hard questions.
Hay River. It’s a great place. It’s open for business. We have room in our schools, we have developed land of every kind of every classification. We have industrial, commercial, residential. We have businesses in Hay River that could take on a lot more business by increasing their overhead by $1. They have the staff, they have the infrastructure, they just need more business.
During this last budget session, we saw jobs come to Hay River, a few that were actually decentralized and a few that were actually new positions, and we’re very, very thankful for that. But going forward with 175 potential new federal jobs coming into the Northwest Territories, I need to understand what the process is for a community like Hay River to, I suppose, put in our bid to be considered for bigger things: departments, divisions, secretariats, agencies. We know we can accommodate headquarters for various activities in the Northwest Territories because we’re already doing it. The Power Corp, library services, Liquor Commission, to name a few.
I’d like to ask the Premier, whose responsibility does this fall under. Is this the program review office? Is it a committee of deputies? Is this the Cabinet themselves? How do we plug into how we’re going to stabilize and increase the viability of our communities outside the capital? Thank you.
Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. The honourable Premier, Mr. McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m very pleased this day has come, because now we can answer all the hard questions.
This is something that we’ve planned for. Obviously, I’ve said it many times in this Assembly, that decentralization is a priority for this government. There are already approximately 175 federal government positions that are located in the Northwest Territories, and there will be approximately the same amount of positions that will be transferred to the Northwest Territories. We’ve been working on our organizational design. We expect to have at least four new departments, and we have been waiting for the jobs and the job descriptions to be provided to us. When we finalize our organizational design, we will also identify where those positions will go. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, would the Premier concur that when we are setting up jobs or activities that are now conducted by the federal government and we are setting up for the Northwest Territories, that it may be simpler to hire people to where they are going, as opposed to trying to move people from where they’re already established and have their children schooled? Is this a window of opportunity now that when we are recruiting people, to have them actually go to where those jobs will be? Thank you.
We are a very effective and efficient government, and that is obviously our intention. It doesn’t make much sense to hire people to put them in one community and then make them move to another community. For that reason, we have been undertaking inventories of available housing, office space. Where it makes sense, we will do exactly that, we will hire people to move into certain communities. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
As Hay River’s motto goes, we are open for business. If you came to Hay River today, when the economy has been a little slow in the last few years, you probably wouldn’t see as much vacancy and things that have been built on speculation for that very reason. But as a part of that inventory, I’d like to ask the Premier, could the government also find a way to ascertain people in the community. We know that 75 percent of all growth within the business sector comes from existing businesses expanding. Could part of that inventory also include canvassing who would be willing to develop infrastructure to accommodate decentralization? Thank you.
We have already faced those types of situations where we’ve identified positions and we’ve wanted to put them in communities, and due to a lack of infrastructure, lack of housing, lack of office space, we couldn’t find any place to put them. So a lot of times we have to park people in other centres. I think that we expect that, on a number of occasions when we do devolution and transfer positions, we may have to park people in larger centres that have the capacity before we develop additional infrastructure in other centres. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Final, short supplementary, Mrs. Groenewegen.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As the Premier knows, Hay River has a very long-established business community, the private sector. We have many multi-generational businesses in Hay River. I’m sure that if the government put out a call for expressions of interest well enough in advance of some of these moves being made, I can assure the Premier that he would get a very favourable response. The government would get a very favourable response to that, with some lead time. I’d like to ask the Premier if that’s an opportunity that could be employed by this government, to give people lead time to create the infrastructure that would accommodate growth in our community. Thank you.
That would be part of our planning process, and that’s something that we are actively looking at. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Member for Range Lake, Mr. Dolynny.
