Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We are back to the budget session, the longest session, the longest sitting of the year for MLAs. Of course the budget is still under lock and key so we can’t talk about any specifics, although we have certainly had some part in consulting with the government on what it contains in it, and we can talk about a budget in general terms.
Mr. Speaker, we have extensive resources but we also have considerable challenges. How do we measure the well-being of our Territory? It is usually through landscape glimpses, through statistics, which can report good news or bad news. It is our job as legislators here to apply our resources to the needs of the people that we serve. In doing so, even with the best of intentions, I believe that we fall short in one area. Our constant need to look for direction and solutions to our challenges from without, at a cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars every year, has always been a source of great frustration to me.
We as a government, as a way of doing business, have for too long placed too much stock in a consultant or an expert or some other outside resources through the many, many studies and reviews that we undertake.
Mr. Speaker, when I look at the level of our financial resources and the level of our needs here in the North, I am of the strong belief that many of the answers, many of the solutions reside within our people themselves, but we as a government have inadvertently thwarted greater gains in addressing our needs by depriving our own people, our NGOs, our community governments, our leaders, our elders, of the resources that they need to find local solutions to local problems. We have created a culture of dependency as people look to us for answers, which many times often lie within themselves.
People who are passionate about specific needs have the ability to harness resources and input that cannot be bought with any amount of money. It is their own knowledge, experience, culture and traditional knowledge that they have and possess that I believe is the answer to many of the challenges that we face and do not make enough progress on.
As we consider yet another budget in the next six weeks or so, I believe we need to challenge ourselves about the way that we do business and what challenges for social and economic prosperity go unanswered and remain in the rut of the status quo. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. The honourable Member for Yellowknife Centre, Mr. Hawkins.
