Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Budget sessions are always the most demanding and we’ve covered much ground over the past few several weeks. A review of these issues before breaking will serve us well.
We’ve made progress in law. We have set in motion the critical actions in the review of the Child and Family Services Act. There have been important revisions to the Dog Act. There have been modest improvements in our controls over Members’ post-term activities and we’ve started on the Heritage Fund.
The debate on the social ills has dominated this session and with good reason. The issues of family violence, elder abuse, victim services and corrections, justice and rehabilitation were particularly stressed. We have spoken to our approach to solutions, expanding the Healthy Families Prevention Program, preservation of nurse practitioner training and service capacity, expansion of midwifery services, integration and improvement of mental health services, the desperate need for more and better housing with affordable rents, the vital importance of school nutrition programs and emphasis on early childhood development. Common elements in confronting all these issues is the need for a cross-program integrated approach, renewed emphasis on gathering hard data that is lacking and meaningful action towards an Anti-Poverty Strategy.
On the environmental front we have highlighted key tools as essential components of a new Greenhouse Gas Reduction Strategy in order to take the government’s substantial progress on renewable energy out into society at large. Examples include NWT-wide building standards and carbon pricing, with the latter at least getting good discussion. Our electrical utility and its very expensive rate review simply churned the old issues with little progress on renewables or the price stability and low carbon output we must achieve. Caribou populations, of course, remain a concern.
In many areas, however, the government ignores the will of the Assembly. Putting food in children’s mouths is the best worst example. Successive business plans, motions for milk subsidies, motions on school lunch programs, resolution of public housing rent subsidies, Members insist, government ignores.
Two keynotes of this government and session: insistence on a devolution agreement without our Aboriginal partners and the long, sad story of the bridge are subjects of public lament. I look forward to working with my colleagues to break through the barriers and gain new ground on these areas, clearly of the greatest importance to our public and our future.
This government isn’t over yet...
Mr. Bromley, your time for your Member’s statement has expired. Thank you, Mr. Bromley. The honourable Member for Great Slave, Mr. Abernethy.
