Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Earlier today I spoke about the term “passive restraint” and the situation we are faced within our financial debt wall. The Financial Management Board Passive Restraint Policy is used in times of trying to find savings within operational spending and usually around job positions and wage dollars, or at least this is how it has been presented to Members of the House.
The duty of a Regular Member is to protect the public purse, and with nothing ever tabled in this House on this policy, it is imperative that we take a moment today and ask some probing questions for the Minister of Finance.
For the record, can the Minister clearly define what is meant by the term “passive restraint”?
Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. The Minister of Finance, Mr. Miltenberger.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I listened to the Member’s statement with interest, and his references to Peter Pan and such, and as he was talking, clearly the image that came to my mind when I think of those characters, of course, was Tinker Bell and Mr. Dolynny sprinkling stardust and fairy dust around as he goes raising his issues in this House. I appreciate the comparison.
In regard to his question, passive restraint is a management tool where targets are set within government, within departments to manage their budgets to realize savings that will help us meet our targets both in savings or to put towards other issues, other commitments, other priorities. That has been in effect now since the last Assembly and it’s just one of the tools we use on an ongoing basis. Of course, every budget is reviewed in this House, there’s public accounts review of how money is spent, where it’s spent and it doesn’t pertain just to holding positions vacant to realize those types of savings, but their managers have any number of other tools at their disposal, as well, to hit those targets. Thank you.
Just to give the Minister a little clue on Peter Pan, it’s pixie dust, not fairy dust.
Can the Minister clearly indicate what savings were realized by using this FMB policy in the past for years? In other words, what total dollars were saved from 2010-2011, from 2011-2012 and from 2012-2013 by initiating this Passive Restraint Policy?
Of course, I will defer to the Member’s superior knowledge when it comes to Peter Pan.
In regard to the savings, every budget that we have done in the life of this Assembly has met the targets that we have set out in terms of managing with fiscal discipline the budgets of the first two years to control our expenditures, the forced growth limits, the hiring limits, all those types of initiatives. We have met those targets this year. While we are still continuing with passive restraint, we are going to be able to in fact honour the third year plan, which is to add $25 million to the capital infrastructure budget this year as well as next year. Thank you.
The only sound I am hearing on this side of the House is tick tock, tick tock, tick tock.
Clearly the Minister is fine with sharing his numbers with the committee, but somehow 24 hours later he has no idea and has nothing to present to the people of the NWT, which I think is quite shameful.
Given our questionable financial situation in the current budget, where we continue to have a number of funded, dormant, inactive positions and a miscalculation of our taxation revenues, can the Minister indicate if the Financial Management Board is initiating any passive restraint policies in its 2014-2015 budget, and if so, what are its targets? Thank you.
Just so the people at home are clear, this is the Legislative Assembly, not never-never land.
The issue that the Member has raised, the answer is yes.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. I would remind the Members, since I was a kid, I have heard Walt Disney in this building more than once, and now this. Let’s try to keep the decorum going respectfully. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Dolynny.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Bang on. I agree with you.
In my view, this government’s duplicitous free spending of its entire first installment of the resource revenues in this current budget is a clever maneuver to cover revenue loss, but sadly, it’s not so clear, from the Minister’s comments today, the need to find additional offset savings for the miscalculated taxation revenue.
That said, why is this Minister financing and not initiating a full court press of passive restraint initiatives in this current budget to find the much needed savings? Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, the Member has accused us, once again, of duplicitous behavior and nothing could be farther from the truth. There was no miscalculation of our estimates for income tax, corporate or personal income tax. We are here with the budget, it’s transparent, we’ve been going through the business planning process like normally we would, we’ll go through the public accounts, and to have the Member accuse us of duplicitous behaviour, to me, is uncalled for and it is not acceptable.
If he wants to stand up and point to something that is truly duplicitous, then I would have him do so. We are on a full court press, we are going to find savings in this budget and we are going to find an additional $30 million in the ‘15-16 budget as well. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Member for Deh Cho, Mr. Nadli.
