Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today I rise to talk about year-to-year and multiyear funding. Mr. Speaker, first I would like to talk about the fact that in June of 2002, a social agenda was tabled in this House, it’s Social Agenda: A Draft for People of the NWT. Some of the recommendations out of that talked about year-to-year funding and it was one of the primary key recommendations, as the way I see it.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to take a small quote from an open letter from then-Premier Kakfwi at the time. He mentioned in his letter: “The working group has worked hard over the last eight months to generate 10 recommendations in this report.” He also recommended that it’s critically important that we work towards an expedient response to the recommendations.

Mr. Speaker, this is over two years old and at the rate we are going, it’s going to be three years very soon. Mr. Speaker, it’s a real concern that we have many organizations out there that are working every year on year-to-year funding. They are putting more administrative time into doing the functions that they do instead of program and service deliveries which are the programs they should be doing.

Mr. Speaker, at present, this government has the appearance of being more worried about devolution deals, oil and gas, hydro and even diamond exploration than dealing with some of the social issues that these riches bring. Mr. Speaker, that causes me some very serious concern. It causes me a lot of duress when I think about this government spending more time worrying about money that we may get some day, dreaming of that money that someday may come. However, Mr. Speaker, we could start doing a lot with the money we have today.

Mr. Speaker, I want to say that we could create a hallmark of this Assembly. We could recreate a system by taking the recommendations raised in the social agenda and putting them to practice. It would be time better spent, Mr. Speaker.

As I said earlier, I would like to see the NGOs out there working with the three or five-year agreement rather than putting time, money and effort into renewing these agreements every single year. Mr. Speaker, what about bureaucratic time that is used to go through this process? We have hundreds and hundreds of organizations out there on year-to-year agreements. They put the time in, but bureaucrats put in a significant amount of time in reviewing these.

I think we could do a lot better for our people out there. Mr. Speaker, I think that time is well spent in program delivery. We could talk about the elimination of red tape, Mr. Speaker. May I seek unanimous consent to continue my Member’s statement? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Speaker: MR. SPEAKER

Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. The Member is seeking unanimous consent to conclude his statement. Are there any nays? There are no nays, Mr. Hawkins. You may conclude your statement.

Robert Hawkins

Yellowknife Centre

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I say thank you to all my colleagues. Mr. Speaker, out there we have NGOs dealing with mounds of paperwork when they should be dealing with social issues they are signed onto. They should be doing program delivery, which they are supposed to do.

Mr. Speaker, long-term multiyear funding would provide stability for these organizations rather than getting them to deal with the stress that is created fighting for year-to-year funding. Mr. Speaker, this is not good for these organizations.

Mr. Speaker, in closing, I will say where is the hallmark of this Assembly? Long after the oil and gas is gone, who is going to be the backbone of the Northwest Territories? Social programs, social NGOs, that help our communities day to day? Where is our leadership? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.