Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I too will obviously be talking about the budget dialogue that the Minister of Finance continues to hold for the last three years.
I’m not sure if I’m really that confident in this budget dialogue process. Indications from this year are we had 97 people attend and we had 11 individuals or groups submit. Those are really low numbers and I’m not sure if we’re using this to direct or just as an excuse that we’ve consulted, because the numbers look crazy as far as I’m concerned. Thirty people from Yellowknife attended. Thirty people from a community that’s very large, the centre and our capital. That’s a very small number. In Hay River we had eight and I know Hay River had more interested; we had a conflict in meetings.
From this type of dialogue, the government moves forward with the budget. Like my colleague indicated, most of this is probably in stone already. So I’m just wondering if the Minister and his department really were hearing the public in this process, or did they have a preconceived notion? Because I know at each meeting, the meetings that I attended, the Minister and the staff had a presentation to make, had a discussion on the fiscal strategy and that we were limited to what we can do anyway. So I’m just wondering if there’s a preconceived notion of how this process is going to happen and the budget that was going to happen. So, are we just playing lip service to the general public?
I’ll have questions for the Minister about what he actually learned out there this year. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Bouchard. The Member for Mackenzie Delta, Mr. Blake.
