Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The population of the Sahtu is about 2,645. Of that population there’s about 270 elders; 45 percent of our population is under the age of 24 years old. I wanted to ask the Premier, responsible for the Department of the Executive, if his department has ever done a study or analysis of what type of dollars would it mean for this government if you were to put in some of the essential, basic services in Colville, Good Hope, Deline, Tulita, in terms of bringing up some of the services that we have in other communities that have government programs that people take for granted.
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. The honourable Minister responsible for the Executive, Mr. Roland.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The work that we have done has been by line departments. For example, I know we’ve looked at the growing seniors population in our communities and the fact that we will need to address those through program reviews. When there are requests from Members of this House to look at extending our home care, for example, or our seniors facilities, as well as increasing our health services or expanding education programs. Each department then does a bit of work to look at what it would require to step up and make decisions on a yearly basis of what we could afford. We haven’t done, through Executive, a study to look at overall impacts across the North. We do use, for example, our geographic tracking costs to look at the level of services we have and the cost of doing business in our communities.
As the Department of Executive, when they’re looking at taking care of the people in the Northwest Territories and the services in the smaller communities, I want to ask the Premier if it makes sense that this department take the initiative to look at this, or is he quite satisfied by having the departments go line by line to see if it makes sense and if we could actually afford a nurse in Colville Lake or have the RCMP present in Colville Lake.
One of the things we’ve done in the life of this government is a Program Review Office that Executive is a part of. We look at how we are investing in our programs across the North and our communities to see if in fact we are delivering the level of service that is required, or how best to try to meet the demands that are being placed on us overall on program delivery in our communities. We have started that work. There is a fair bit of work that has been done that will help decision-makers coming up as to what areas we should invest in across the North.
I must say that as well as the Government of the Northwest Territories that started this Assembly, we went through an exercise of looking at a re-profile of some of our dollars. We weren’t as successful at shrinking our budgets that would then allow us to reinvest in some of these critical areas. That decision will again remain open and the possibility for future governments to make some key decisions on.
I certainly look forward to some of those discussions also. I want to ask the Premier: wouldn’t it make sense, I guess, coming back and having some of these analyses before we are done this Assembly, to look at does it make sense to put some of these key basic essential services or programs in some of the communities that do not have them versus some of the ones that are already there?
I guess what I’m looking for is, it’s been four years since I’ve been asking for an RCMP presence in Colville Lake. We’re always being told we have to deal with the fiscal constraint. So I want to see how successful the 17th Assembly will be in terms of putting an RCMP there.
All governments that I’ve been a part of, I know the Member as well, Members of this Assembly, we are all going to be challenged in every business plan cycle we go through with the fiscal restraints that we are faced with. The decisions that need to be made on key priority areas, how do we achieve them are going to always be debates as we go forward.
I will say, though, as we look at some of those questions that were asked of us, the Program Review Office has been involved with issues like medical travel, pupil-teacher ratio, inclusive school funding, telecommunications, harvester support programs, and evaluation of travel administration for casual health care staff, this is also being conducted. As we get that information we’ll be able to use that for decisions being made about where we put our key investments, what type of dollars will be required for additional investment, and where we would have to get those, as well. We will ongoing do that kind of work, and with the request being made here, we could put it to the refocusing government process to see if we will do additional work in this area.
Thank you, Mr. Roland. The honourable Member for Yellowknife Centre, Mr. Hawkins.
