Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I have neither a podium nor new shoes, but I will do my best.
Mr. Speaker, I'm delighted to stand today to reply to the Budget Address, if not for its content but for the fact that we are at last able to make real decisions that will affect the aspirations and needs of the people we represent. It has been 192 days since we were all elected to serve our constituents in this Chamber, and since then the pace of our new government has been measured and cautious. We have, as a caucus, opted to take our time to stay in our comfort zone and take decisions slowly as we move to more consequential choices that will define the actions of the 20th Assembly and ultimately deliver on results to Northerners in all of our communities.
While I appreciate that we must continue to move together as one to realize the dream of true consensus government, it is a bit too slow for what the Northwest Territories needs right now. Northerners know we have difficult years ahead and equally difficult decisions that must be made today if we are to preserve a future for our land and our peoples, but slow and steady we have been.
First, with an interim budget that promised little more than to keep the lights on while we went on to plan bigger and better things, our priorities, four collaborative themes that serve as the axis for which the 20th Assembly for the 20th Assembly and guide our decisionmaking.
Suitability, accessibility, and affordability of housing;
A strong economic foundation;
Access to health care and addressing the effects of trauma; and,
Safe residents and communities.
These political priorities are something we all agree to in this House, and I am confident that Northerners agree to these as well, as the correct choice to chart for our government. But these priorities are not precise actions for our government to take. Rather, they represent the ideal outcomes of the work we set out to accomplish for the next three years. The precise measurable actions that will be taken are in the mandate a document produced by the Premier and Cabinet. At least it was supposed to be.
Instead, the mandate further refines the priorities by adding additional aspirational goals as bulleted lists nested under each priority. Oh, and, Mr. Speaker, the mandate also splits the third priority in half into access to health care and addressing the effects of trauma. So now we're up to five priorities. Mr. Speaker, we're getting closer to some real commitments. But you won't find them in the mandate. No, instead, you have to look at the fouryear business plans, documents that will be tabled later today. These have been created by the departments to meet the priorities in the mandate, priorities based on the priorities of the Assembly. The business plans are significantly better than the mandate as they offer clear and tangible outcomes that the government intends to put in place through its efforts over the life of the 20th Assembly. The public and Regular Members can use these to measure the effectiveness of Cabinet and hold us all to account for the promises we have made. But there's still something missing, Mr. Speaker.
These plans lack cohesion towards a shared vision for the territory. They are the best efforts produced by a single ministry in a vast government enterprise of thousands of workers. I'm told behind closed doors I will have to wait for mandate letters to be issued before I truly get to see the full picture of how this government will eventually work together. But I am tired of waiting. It seems that there is also another there's always another process around the corner, another step that must be taken before we can get to governing this territory.
I want to empower our Cabinet to lead, but there's too much hesitancy to seize the initiative especially when the answer is always another process, another procedure, another plan. It feels as if we're in a cycle of perpetual planning instead of taking any kind of action.
Mr. Speaker, the Chamber of Mines in Nunavut have been loud in sounding the alarm bell for the future of our economy with their Eyes Wide Open report. The key message of this report is, quote, "at the most basic level, there appears to be no clear unified vision for the territory. The consequence is a lack of urgency that might have otherwise resulted in investments to revitalize the resource sector or that gave way to a thorough exploration into whatever is to be the alternative."
This report has shocking predictions that include the NWT losing more than a thousand residents as a direct result of the diminished resource sector with Yellowknife experiencing as much as 70 percent of those losses. This, of course, means the GNWT stands to lose over $100 million in revenue in a scenario where the resource sector disappears further exacerbating our strained financial resources. This commentary is important for us to consider because it's critical of something I raised earlier the lack of a cohesive vision from the government as a whole.
This budget suffers from the same problem of divided government as the business plans. Each department followed their marching orders from the Financial Management Board to deliver cuts to meet the fiscal strategy while realigning spending towards the mandate priorities in isolation of one another. Well, what we have here today is a financial Frankenstein's monster, collated interdepartmental budgets brought together by the Minister of Finance, with a first to tell you that she does not make the budget but plays little more than a coordinating role. If we need proof of a lack of vision and cohesive agenda, look no further than the $10 million spending cap on forced growth and new initiatives that this government committed to in its fiscal strategy. This budget proposes to exceed it by $39.7 million. The good news is this is not an austerity budget. The bad news is it's not an anything budget. It does not propose anything transformative, nor does it promise deep cuts and job losses. It fails to reduce spending in a significant way that will restore balance as per the fiscal strategy, and it fails to significantly invest in this Assembly's priorities and, importantly, our communities.
The municipal funding gap remains unresolved with local governments underfunded to the tune of $52 million. The small community employment support program and capital access program are both being gutted to save the GNWT $2.5 million at the expense of much needed investment in small Indigenous communities across the NWT. But perhaps most alarming are the proposed cuts to Housing NWT. The department is reducing its budget by 10 percent or nearly $13 million. Some of these reductions are sunsetting federal dollars. Others are driven by FMB mandated reductions, including $583,000 cut from the rental affordability assistance funding. In practical terms, though there will be 226 units that NWT Housing plans to build in the 20th Assembly, none of them are new. They are existing commitments that represent no net increase to housing stock in the NWT. Using this example, we see a department whose core mandate is essential to realize the top priority of the 20th Assembly prevented from doing so because cuts were mandated by process, and everybody had to chip in.
The thinking behind this budget did not start from a place of how do we deliver on housing priorities and make necessary cuts to achieve that. And therein lies the problem. We need leadership from the centre, and that means consensusbased decisionmaking needs to change.
I want to be clear that I do not I do believe we have Ministers who get it and want to break down silos and get results to make an impact. What we lack is the courage to break free of the systems within our institutions that prevent that from happening. If this Assembly is to succeed, this Cabinet needs to embrace a radical departure from the status quo if we are to see different results. I will acknowledge that the Premier alluded to this in his speech yesterday when presenting the mandate, and the finance Minister today spoke about being creative, imaginative, and taking more risks.
Mr. Speaker, talk is cheap, and Northerners are expecting action. This budget does not deliver on change. It doesn't even try.
Mr. Speaker, most important to me and many Northerners and I think all Northerners is our health care system. Of all responsibilities of this government and all governments in Canada, this is the most important because it is struggling not only in the services it provides to our residents but as a matter of financial sustainability. The Auditor General has taken the uncommon approach to draw the attention of the public to ongoing questions of health care spending because, quite frankly, it is destabilizing the very system of our government's financial resources. This budget proposes health and social services spending of $644 million, a 6 percent increase from last year. This is not a case of underinvestment. It is a case of good value for money and ensuring these dollars are improving patient outcomes and recruiting and retaining new clinicians, doctors, nurses, and allied health professionals. Our results on both fronts have been poor for many years, and spending more is not resulting in better care. We must get health care spending under control and make it both efficient and effective. And just as well because we need to get health care management under control.
Health care professionals I've spoken to have warned me that they have true belief that the present state of a health care system and the daytoday functioning at Stanton Hospital are placing the public at risk, and they fear that something serious and irreversible will happen soon. There is a staffing crisis at the hospital and throughout the health care system. Nurses on the frontline often work short. It is even alleged that they are required to take unsafe patient assignments that are against internal policies and against Canadian standards of practice. Given the grave situation on the frontline, it should come as no surprise that the health authorities have made great use of private health agencies. Last year alone, NTHSSA spent $4.4 million on private health agency nurses, the equivalent of 31 registered nurse positions. A longterm reliance on agency nurses will cripple the budget and overall health care system. If agency nurses are going to be used in a great number, I foresee a huge exodus of local nurses and locum nurses. This will reduce services available to Northerners and raise costs ever higher for the provision of basic health care in our communities.
Finding a solution will require significant investment and time. We could create an environment that would attract health care talent and be one of the premiere employment facilities nationally, just like it used to be only ten years ago. But if we make this a priority and bring the management of health care dollars under closer scrutiny, we must phase out the use of private agency nurses by the end of 2026 as many other jurisdictions in Canada are currently doing.
Mr. Speaker, it is important to point out where I think this budget gets it right. And perhaps my opinion is solely colored by the priorities of my Range Lake riding but, nonetheless, they are new and promising initiatives being proposed.
I commend the Premier for making public safety and community policing a top priority of his ministry of Justice. There is a welcomed and much needed investment of $1.8 million on crime reduction resources, including nine new RCMP members and a dedicated organized crime unit in Gdivision. Likewise, the Department of Justice promises an ambitious and novel legislative agenda with the Trespass Act, Civil Forfeiture Act, and Safer Communities and Neighbourhoods Act as clear examples of tools that will assist in enhancing community policing in Yellowknife and all our communities.
The Department of Infrastructure has a good handle on its many capital projects with clear and often costed timelines indicated in its business plan. There is planning in place for the electrification of highways, implementation of electric vehicles, or EVs, and the expansion of the Taltson hydroelectric dam necessary investments in clean energy that cannot come soon enough.
Likewise, Industry, Tourism and Investment has the Sisyphean ordeal of reviving a flagging economy. The much delayed and deflated Mineral Resources Act implementation remains a concern, but I am confident that the Minister's well aware of what needs to be done and is bringing forward spending to get it done in this budget. I wish there was more support for the minerals industry, particularly an increase to the mining incentive policy, funding that results in five times the amount of funding invested in local NWT communities. There is low hanging fruit in many of the programs that are successes that we should be investing in a time of economic contraction.
Mr. Speaker, as it stands, this is not a budget that I can support without significant change. While I acknowledge it's not my place to make the budget, it is my place to recommend changes that support the needs of Range Lake, Yellowknife, and for all Northerners. I simply do not believe there's enough imagination and ambition to move the government forward towards growth and change in the years ahead. We must get this right from the start. We cannot afford to start on the wrong foot and risk the progress that Northerners expect from us and elected us to deliver on their behalf. I made a promise not to let them down, and it is promise I intend to keep. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
