Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As I briefly alluded to in my Member’s statement, the population of the Northwest Territories is declining. This presents problems on many fronts for us as a government. I’d like to direct my question to the Minister of Finance and ask him if he has, and I’m sure he has… I mean, I have my theories about why the population is going down, but I’d like to ask the Minister of Finance if his department has done some extensive analysis of this situation and what kinds of reasons are emerging for this decrease in population.
Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. The Minister of Finance, Mr. Miltenberger.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There are a number of areas that have been a source of persistent concern in regard to the issue that the Member raises. Things like the fly-in/fly-out population, things like our own vacancy rate, things like the amount of students that we pay to go to school, as the Member indicated in her opening comments, that we don’t recruit back here. We need to do a better job. We’ve put in place an immigrant Nominee Program, as well, that we believe needs to be improved and beefed up so that it can, in fact, help address some of the many jobs across government, not only across government but across the Northwest Territories, including industries that are currently going begging. Those are sort of four major areas.
The Minister of Finance cites many of the obvious reasons why our population is going down. I was just wondering: within the government, in order to come up with some creative ways to address this problem, who will be taking the lead role in addressing this? Like I said in my Member’s statement, we can be very optimistic and excited about the future of the Northwest Territories, but the fact is we are going to be challenged in many ways if our population continues to decline.
The Premier has given me the responsibility of being the chair of the Economic and Employment Development Committee of Cabinet, and this issue falls under the mandate of that committee, so I will be chairing that committee, and the deputy minister of Finance will be chairing the committee of deputies. If the Member would be patient for one day, in the budget address I would provide greater clarity as to the intent, how to proceed on this particular issue.
I’ve been here 19 years. I guess I can wait one day to hear what the Minister has to say. I think there are some very good ideas out there, definitely from this side of the House, probably from some people in the public who could participate with us in an exercise to look at how we can address the situation.
The Minister mentioned the vacancy in our public service. Just in our employ, or within our purview there are approximately 800 vacant positions that are not filled, so there are many, many fronts on which we can work.
I’d like to ask the Minister, how far will he cast his net of acquiring assistance in helping to come up with initiatives that will address this situation?
We see this as a territory-wide issue, and once again, tomorrow as I present the budget, in the budget we articulate what our thinking is and our intent to involve Northerners across the board, and of course, in this House we’ll commit to full engagement of the committees and the Members opposite as we look at ways to address this issue in a constructive way.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Final, short supplementary, Mrs. Groenewegen.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have quite a few ideas of my own on this. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s budget address tomorrow, and I look forward to working with him on this.
Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. The Member for Sahtu, Mr. Yakeleya.
