Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to make a few comments about the budget. Obviously, there are many things in this budget. Some of the things that we are pleased with is obviously the moving of the territorial parks office to the Hay River area, the $1.5 million in support of the commercial fishery, the housing programs in Hay River, and maybe even a million dollars for the Arctic Winter Games for Hay River or Inuvik. Obviously, we’re happy with no new taxes. I think most people are pleased with that.
We are spending $930 million in social programs, a large amount, but yet we still have a lot of people asking questions, people that want help with mental addictions, drug and alcohol addictions or mental health. Northern contractors are still complaining about northern content and northern supply. People are still concerned about northern manufacturing and the fact that we’re not supporting some of our northern businesses.
We have some other positive things in the budget. Obviously, the $20 million subsidy to power rates, our constituents wanted that, didn’t want to pay more in power, but we need to find better ways to do that and I see other things, solar, wind, other investments. All of this positive stuff done with the government’s budget, with forced growth, trying to hold forced growth, but the concerns are the spending.
In this Assembly we’ve seen a 16.7 percent increase in our budget. Not a bad number, 16.7, but when you look at it in the way of a number, $236 million more than when we started this Assembly, that number has to be put under control. We have to figure out a way to do more with less. We have to control this spending. We can’t let it get out of control. It’s getting way too big, never mind the amount of debt that we are carrying and we’re getting bigger and bigger. We need to control that more. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Mr. Bouchard. The Member for Sahtu, Mr. Yakeleya.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I too want to make comments on the budget address. On page 11 of the budget, titled Looking Ahead, when we look at the first paragraph on page 11, it paints a bleak picture of what possibly could happen in the Northwest Territories. Our revenue growth is basically going to be flat to 2019-2020. This is what’s coming up for the new Legislative Assembly next year.
Our revenue coming in will not increase very much, but our expenditures, as Mr. Bouchard talked about, are increasing. We want more. Communities are asking for more. Our needs are being challenged by the less revenue that we have coming in.
The way I look at it, something has got to give. We can’t sustain this way of doing business and operating our territory. More and more is being asked of the Assembly, being asked of the MLAs. We’re a territory. That’s $1.2 billion of the $1.8 billion, as stated, comes from the federal government. Our dependency on the federal government is great and we’re just raising $425 million from our own-source revenues.
I’m glad that there are no new taxes coming in, but when you look at it, certainly as the Minister said, we are being pushed to the edge of a cliff, but who is pushing us? We don’t want to operate on our toes going forward.
I think it’s going to take a whole new mindset and attitude going forward on how do we maintain what we have now, sustain that and look at everything. Nothing is safe anymore in the operation of this territorial government. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. The Member for Mackenzie Delta, Mr. Blake.
