Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Like my other colleagues here today, I too am concerned about the efficiency and costs of government and what it is doing to deal with that cost. As I highlighted in my Member’s statement, it is clearly mentioned in the Finance Minister’s budget today under Fiscal Strategy. He is willing to seek out creative new ideas. Mr. Speaker, to the Finance Minister, I would like to pose the question. What would be stopping the Minister of Finance from hiring an efficiency expert to review our programs that we are doing? Because I am not convinced at this time that the Program Review Office is doing that type of work that needs to be done to scrutinize our books. Mr. Speaker, would the Finance Minister be willing to examine that concept? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. The honourable Minister of Finance, Mr. Miltenberger.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It depends whether it is going to be on contract or whether it is going to be using one of our own employees, I would suggest.
Mr. Speaker, I suspect that answer wasn’t for me. It was for someone else. By and large, that answer was very inefficient in its quality because it didn’t actually have an answer to it. The reality is, Mr. Speaker, I would like to know what would stop the Finance Minister from hiring an efficiency expert just like large industry does, whether it is BHP or any type of large conglomerate that spends a lot of time examining every dollar that they spend. Would the Finance Minister be willing to do that? Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, we have, I believe, all of the elements that we need in place to make those right decisions. We want to work with the Members, like the Member for Great Slave with his suggestions, about somehow harnessing in a more effective way the creativity of our existing staff and are there ways to have less reliance on the very many contract folks that we use to do the very many pieces of work that government needs to get done, because, on a normal course of events, the staff we have are fully engaged. I think we would have to think carefully before we commit outright, standing up on the basis of one question and start hiring efficiency experts, be it on contract or be it on adding new positions to government when one of the efficiencies we have to look at is what is the right size of government. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, to some degree I think that the Finance Minister gets it, but he is spending my question period answering the previous Member’s questions, which isn’t very efficient for my issues.
Mr. Speaker, part of the other issue I raised during my Member’s statement, which still is in line with the same issue about efficiency of government, is about setting the appropriate targets. In the Finance Minister’s budget, he did talk about capping expenditures at 3 percent. Mr. Speaker, what was the resistance setting it at either a reduction of 1 percent or a reduction of 2 percent and allowing our competent managers and skilled individuals who work for the government to meet those targets, let them do the details for government such as the Finance Minister to provide the direction on those initiatives? Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, we had set the target, as the Member indicated, to cap it at 3 percent net of compensation requirements. We are going to bring it in at 2.
We all must recognize there are very many things out there that continue to drive our costs that we don’t control, but we also know, and we’ve already heard from some of the Members, in fact quite a few of the Members, about the things that we should add in addition to what we’ve already put into the budget as we struggle to contain the costs. I point out in the budget address the demands and levels of expectation of Northerners is very high because they are used to an extremely high quality of programs and the ability for government just to keep adding more programs. As I’ve indicated, if we’re going to keep adding them, we have to have the hard decision of what don’t we do if we’re going to continue to do this and stay within a 3 percent cap. We’re down to 2 percent. I can tell you 1 percent is going to be a significant exercise because just getting to 2 is difficult.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Final supplementary, Mr. Hawkins.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would argue with the Minister by saying that the direction starts here and although the rattling of the swords should not be happening in the department of opposition, they should be following the direction of the Finance Minister. So when he says that it would be difficult, the dye needs to be cast at the FMB table, not within the department telling the Finance Minister where their cap is. I’m convinced that the cart is leading the horse.
What, really, at the end of the day can the Minister speak to this budget where we’ve had a significant notice in the reduction of costs to government? I’ve highlighted at least one. We don’t have to go through that. What is a noticeable reduction of cost of government that is being proposed or has been demonstrated in the last couple of years?
The Member has to keep in mind what we collectively agreed would be the role of the government and the Legislature through the course of the last number of years through this economic downturn; the worst, as I like to say, since the Great Depression. We’ve managed our way through this, we have kept our expenditures where they were, we didn’t lay off folks, we invested a billion dollars in infrastructure because we knew we had to step into the gap as the private sector struggled, as the private sector revenues dropped. As we’ve seen today, the fallout is still with us with the drop in corporate income tax. We realized and took it upon ourselves to play that stabilizing role. Now it’s time, like every other government across the land and across the world, to look at managing the budgets, the fiscal situation, so that we don’t mortgage our future. We’ve started to do that. Two percent growth net of compensation is, I would suggest, over time, if you look back, a significant decrease when the average rates of growth were 4 or 5 percent and health was growing at 8 or 9 percent.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. The honourable Member for Weledeh, Mr. Bromley.
