Debates of May 19, 2011 (day 11)

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today I would like to talk about decentralization. This is something often talked about but seldom acted on. I don’t understand the reluctance to having a greater presence of the public service in the communities outside of the capital.

The majority of the MLAs in this Assembly are clearly from outside of Yellowknife. There is regional representation in Cabinet for a reason. Even some Yellowknife MLAs agree with the idea of relocating some departments or divisions outside of the capital, but they shall remain unnamed since there’s an election coming up.

We talk about a representative workforce. Why don’t we look at taking the jobs to where more of the people who are underrepresented in our workforce actually live and have lived for generations? We have modern communications. Most people send e-mails to the person sitting in the next office to them anyway, so what difference does it make if someone’s in the next cubicle or the next town?

Does the resistance come from within the bureaucracy because no one wants to give up their morning coffee at Tim Horton’s? Can you imagine how MLAs such as myself feel when our government builds yet another $40 million office building in Yellowknife to “relieve pent-up demand.” Pent-up demand? Other communities would be happy to have any demand, let alone pent-up demand.

Let’s talk about Hay River. There’s a lot of capacity to absorb a lot more people. We have all types of developed land, quality homes, commercial infrastructure, amenities for recreation, the arts, room for more students in all of our schools, and a way better golf course than Yellowknife.

We say we want sustainable, viable, prosperous communities, while Yellowknife continues to grow on itself and the regions and small communities are suffering and stagnating. When is there going to be leadership in this House willing to sit down and look seriously at where we can reasonably, efficiently and effectively relocate departments, divisions, positions to bring them closer to the people they serve and bolster the economies of all our communities?

If devolution is coming, way before we get to that final agreement we need to talk about displacing the concentration of government in Yellowknife and put our actions where our priorities are. As you can see, I haven’t decided if I’m running again or not.

Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. The honourable Member for Frame Lake, Ms. Bisaro.