Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As I started yesterday, I indicated that we were in an exciting time here, and the Minister of Finance’s presentation of the budget today is no exception to that excitement. We’re going to show a $200 million surplus. He’s indicated that there’s a bunch of indications for Hay River’s opportunity: midwifery, obviously the biomass industry is of great interest in the Hay River area and the South Slave, and also investment in the fishing industry.
Devolution brings a lot of excitement. We’re seeing $59 million for new employees, revenue of $27 million. Everything should be bright and shiny.
Over the next few weeks, we’ll be deliberating and discussing issues that we are having difficulties with. One of the biggest issues is the Heritage Fund. We’re getting resource revenue sharing, the budget indicates we’re putting 5 percent of that away, we’re saving for the future. But I and my colleagues believe that we should be investing more; 25 percent is kind of the indicator.
We need to be putting money away for the future generations. These resources are non-renewable. They are things that once they’re gone we won’t have in the future. I know there’s a lot of development potential, but we still need to be putting away money for the future, and 5 percent is just not enough.
What are we going to do? We’re down $30 million in revenue. How are we going to generate that revenue? How are we going to get people back in the Northwest Territories? How are we going to deal with the fly-in/fly-out situation and students that are being paid by our Education but yet decide to stay in the South?
People in the North are looking for our guidance in several different areas: education, early childhood development, health and wellness, legal aid, translations for legal, and the film industry. I support development and the growing of our economy. One billion dollars more debt, though, how are we going to carry that forward? How are we going to carry that debt?
We need to be careful of all the projects that we’re removing or all we’re doing with that $1 billion…
I seek unanimous consent to conclude my statement.
---Unanimous consent granted
Our Minister of Finance has been travelling through the Northwest Territories and he’s indicated to the public that with that resource revenue sharing money we’re going to put some money into the Heritage Fund, we’re going to pay down debt. But, really, we’re not paying down debt. We’re looking at taking on another billion dollars’ worth of debt.
The general public supported the concept of putting money away, and I think the way we put money away is through our Heritage Fund, and we should be putting money away at 25 percent per year, not 5 percent.
Thank you, Mr. Bouchard. The Member for Frame Lake, Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As I’ve listened to the Finance Minister and went through the budget address and looked at some of the highlights, I was quite pleased with some of the initiatives happening in the Northwest Territories, certainly the long-held dream of Cece McCauley in Norman Wells on the Mackenzie Valley Highway and the work towards that, and the government is responding to the oil and gas activity in the Sahtu and other areas around the Northwest Territories that the government is responding with the fiscal restraint that we’re operating under. Of course, the new day for us will be devolution on April 1st in a couple of months from now.
I’m very surprised and, like Mrs. Groenewegen talked about, there was some creativity with this budget here. I was shockingly surprised to see that there were hundreds of vacant positions within the government. Every year we come to this part of our Assembly and we approve positions, and the government has said there were hundreds of vacant positions. We approve it, but the money… I don’t know where the money goes. I’m not sure what the exact number is and how many positions are vacant and how much money that relates to, but we should have some discussion because some of our requests don’t quite make the table through the budget address, as one of my colleagues mentioned.
I want to raise that as an alarming concern of the positions that we, as a government, have not yet quite figured out on the efficiency and the effectiveness of government when we have hundreds of vacant positions within our government. That money is approved, it’s there within the departments, but we don’t see the end result of it. What happens to it? We’re asking for positions in our small communities and we’re always asking for these positions, can we get this position, and they keep saying no, there’s no money or it doesn’t quite meet the standards.
So I wanted to say to the government that we’re paying attention over here and we’ll be asking some hard questions the next couple of weeks.
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. The Member for Mackenzie Delta, Mr. Blake.
