Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I share much of the concerns raised by Member Dolynny and thank him for the opportunity to bring the motion forward to talk about it.
I was part of the group in 2007 that was enthusiastically behind this initiative of the program review office and was genuinely optimistic that it would find savings, and it would be designed in a manner to look at savings in sort of a microscopic type of way, forensic, let’s go through these things, what does this mean, what does it affect, how does it have an impact on other things. Once that type of issue and question was qualified, and certainly quantified, it would be brought to the political machinery to just now say, look, here are your choices: red pill or blue pill. This one leads you in one direction and this one sends you right back to where you are. Quite frankly, I was kind of hoping that we’d get those types of things, but we never really did. I never felt that from its inception that it did that.
I think in a lot of ways what it did was it found pet projects to work on, and I agree that they’re great philosophical, political questions to look at, but I think at the end of the day it didn’t really look at trying to chew the costs of government on, ask the question why if we had this policy in place for 20 years and by golly, we just keep renewing it because, and because was sometimes the worst answer, but that seems to be why we’re doing stuff. I mean, I’ve had good, robust discussions with Minister Miltenberger about how do we trim things in government and all we do is we add, we add, we add, and he teases Members back about wanting more, and you know, that’s true too. But, like, when do we look at reducing programs and when do we talk about them and how do we talk about them? We never have that type of discussion, and that, in my view, is what the program review office was all about. It was about to ask those questions by saying, is this the policy our government wants to continue to follow? Is this the road that we need to be on?
I think that this program review office, we need to be asking ourselves, is it doing what we originally wanted it to do? I’m not sure it is. I think that it’s sort of down-periscope-approach on solving problems, I mean, they need to come to the surface once in a while, come to committee, and I’d say come to committee and get committee’s direction. I understand committee is a challenging sort of beast in itself, 11 opinions, different ways, and oddly enough, even though it’s 11 members, you probably leave with 12 different directions.
It is a challenge; I fully recognize that. But frankly, I never felt that we’re getting the value of this office in the direction we wanted, and I can tell you, we’re doing PTR, and some will say, well, geez, that came out of the program review office. Well, I can tell you, many Members never felt good about that from the start.
I can tell you that there was a robust thrust against the idea about the building downtown. It became a challenge. It just seems like in the end they just do what they want at the direction of Cabinet, and I’m not convinced a lot of this stuff that they’re looking at are really about the core intent, so I think it really needs a real review as to why it’s there, as to have that heart to heart and ask ourselves, are these people in this program better served somewhere else, and only a review will be able to do that.
I’d like to leave my colleagues guessing which way I’m going to vote, so we’ll wait for the final count on a recorded vote, obviously. Thank you.
Mr. Chair, after some great consideration and thought, and after his passionate comments provided by my colleague Mr. Yakeleya, I will be supporting the motion. Of course, I will be asking for a recorded vote. Thank you.
Question has been called. The Member has asked for a recorded vote. All those in favour, please stand.
Mr. Yakeleya, Mr. Menicoche, Mr. Blake, Mr. Bouchard, Mr. Hawkins, Ms. Bisaro, Mr. Moses.
All those opposed, please stand.
Mr. Beaulieu, Mr. Abernethy, Mr. Miltenberger, Mr. McLeod – Yellowknife South, Mr. Lafferty, Mr. Ramsay, Mr. McLeod – Inuvik Twin Lakes.
The results of the recorded vote: seven for, seven opposed; a tie. In this case, colleagues, my vote as Chair is against the motion in order to retain status quo and provoke further debate. The motion is defeated.
--Defeated
Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I move that we report progress.
---Carried
