Whitehorse, Yukon

Speaker: I will now call this House to order. We will proceed at this time with prayers.

Speaker: We will proceed at this time with the Order Paper.

Tributes.

Introduction of visitors.

Mr. Cathers: At this time, I’d like to welcome the class from Hidden Valley School, the grade 5 and 6 class, who are present with us today.

Speaker: Are there any returns or documents for tabling?

Hon. Mr. Kenyon: Mr. Speaker, I rise to table an update of environmental indicators entitled, "The Yukon’s State of the Environment Interim Report 2001".

Speaker: Are there any other returns or documents for tabling?

Are there any reports of committees?

Are there any petitions?

Are there any bills to be introduced?

Are there any notices of motion?

Mr. Fairclough: I give notice of the following motion:

THAT it is the opinion of this House that

(1) during the recent election campaign, the Yukon Party made specific commitments to increase funding for child care in the territory;

(2) the budget tabled in this House on March 6, 2003, not only failed to honour this commitment, it actually cut financial support for services to children and youth across the territory;

(3) the budget also failed to account for the increased funding the territory will receive from the federal government as a result of the recent first ministers meetings; and

(4) in spite of a 10-year old promise to introduce a national child care program, the federal Liberal government’s most recent financial commitment to child care is expected to fall drastically short of the Yukon’s needs; and

THAT this House calls upon the Yukon Party government to introduce a supplementary budget at the earliest opportunity to meet its election commitments to Yukon families and to child care professionals.

Mr. Rouble: I give notice of the following motion:

THAT this House recognizes that

(1) the Yukon and its northern neighbours face common issues related to sparse populations, great distances between communities and vast areas of land to administer;

(2) these issues are not always well understood by the Government of Canada, provincial governments and others when making decisions affecting the north; and

(3) it is beneficial to establish a strong relationship with neighbouring jurisdictions in order to work together on matters of mutual concern to present sound and forceful positions to resolve these issues; and

THAT this House urges the Yukon government to work together with the governments of Northwest Territories, Nunavut, British Columbia, Alberta and Alaska to develop bilateral and other agreements to advance their common interests.

Ms. Duncan: I give notice of the following motion:

THAT it is the opinion of this House that

1. the child care community was led to believe that a Yukon Party government would make affordable, accessible child care an immediate priority; and

2. the child care community feels betrayed by this government because the recent budget failed to meet this commitment; and

THAT this House urges the Yukon Party government to live up to its commitment to children and the child care community by providing the necessary funding to make immediate improvements to the child care system, as promised during the election.

Mr. Arntzen: I give notice of the following motion:

THAT it is the opinion of this House that

1. quality child care is a fundamental concern to all Yukon citizens; and

2. there are a number of issues that need careful consideration in the development of child care policy including wages and training of child care workers, professional development, subsidies to parents and direct operating grants; and

   THAT this House urges the Government of Yukon to

   1. develop a four-year action plan of child care in consultation with First Nation governments, Society of Yukon Family Day Homes, Yukon Child Care Association, Yukon Child Care Board, parents and other stakeholders; and

   2. actively work with the Government of the Northwest Territories and the Government of Nunavut to jointly seek increased federal funding for child care and early learning in the north.

Speaker: Any further notices of motion?

Is there a ministerial statement?

That brings us to Question Period.

Mr. Fairclough: My question is for the Minister of Health and Social Services. On October 29 at the leaders forum, the Premier was asked a simple yes-or-no question. The question was: "I would like to know if he will increase wages for early childhood professionals — yes or no?"

Here is the answer from the Yukon Party leader, who is now the Premier: "A yes-or-no question deserves a yes-or-no answer. Yes."

Mr. Speaker, the Premier said yes. I would like to ask the minister: why has the minister reneged on his party’s promise to increase funding to child care?

Hon. Mr. Jenkins: Our party is committed to addressing the shortcomings in the daycare situation here in the Yukon. It was part of our election platform. It was one of the major commitments.

Now what the member sees in the budget is a reflection of the economic times that currently exist. Thanks in part to the previous administrations, we have had a downturn in the number of individuals in child care and in the subsidy. The number of day homes is down; the number of day care centres is down. The amount of subsidy that is being given out is pretty well consistent with last year.

We have committed to a whole process of reviewing the daycare situation. In fact, the first exercise our government went through after being elected to power was task an individual with commencing this review.

Mr. Fairclough: The minister is already making excuses on why that party is breaking its promises. If there is a willingness to find monies, if there is an interest there, the Yukon Party does that. It found monies — $200,000 — to pay for help. They had a contract written up for help, but they couldn’t do it there for child care. So the interest isn’t there in this Yukon Party government. As a matter of fact, Mr. Speaker, child care workers are very upset at this government’s budget.

The same person who asked the question at the leaders forum was in the paper on Friday. I apologize for the unparliamentary language, but this is a quote: "We are extremely disappointed in the Yukon territorial government for lying to the child care community and letting the children and families of the Yukon down."

There is even a real threat that the child care workers across the territory could walk off the job. So will the minister call a meeting immediately with the Yukon child care workers and their association to resolve this matter?

Hon. Mr. Jenkins: Mr. Speaker, that is our intention and that is what we are doing. Currently, our government is paying out $1.4 million in subsidies for children in care and the subsidies — direct operating grants. Eighty-four percent of the workers who were polled want a complete review. A complete review, Mr. Speaker, takes longer than 90 days. We are compiling the information. As soon as we have reviewed that information, we’ll be back out with the options to all of the daycare operators, day home operators and daycare workers. But the wages are very, very important issues, as is training, and those will be addressed in the program that we are developing and that we will bring forward for the consideration of the daycare home operators and their workers.

Speaker: I would remind the member that even quoting issues that are unparliamentary are not acceptable, so I would ask you to please limit yourself.

Mr. Fairclough: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, the minister has made excuses. There is no excuse. The Yukon Party government put forward a budget, and now we have a wait-and-see attitude, wait until we talk to the child care workers — which should have taken place already before the budget was developed. Now we see cuts in health care. And there are certainly huge gaps in the budget in Health and Social Services, especially in regional services.

Now, the federal government has committed to resource some of this health care money that they clawed back in the 1990s. Will the minister ensure that additional federal monies will go toward honouring the Yukon Party’s commitment to increase wages for child care professionals? Will he do that?

Hon. Mr. Jenkins: Mr. Speaker, that’s exactly what this money is earmarked for, and that’s exactly what we’re going to do. I thank the member for the question, but it must be pointed out that the federal Government of Canada, in providing this money for day care across Canada, what this translates to for Yukon is $25,000 of additional funding. That’s why the Premier of the Yukon, in concert with the premiers of the other two northern territories, has developed this Northern Accord. They’re going forward to the federal Minister of Finance and the Prime Minister of Canada seeking to correct these imbalances, because on a per capita basis we have no way at all of meeting these obligations.

So, we are working on many, many fronts but the question that the member opposite posed is exactly what we’re doing.

Mr. Hardy: Later today, this House will begin debate on one of the bleakest budgets the Yukon has ever seen. Actually, we could probably go back to when the Yukon Party was in government last time to see a bleak budget delivered in this manner. What a lot of people find shocking is the complete lack of economic vision or leadership. The Premier is so fixated on the spinning trajectory that he is basically saying to the world that the government isn’t prepared to invest in the Yukon — why should you?

Will the Premier tell the House how he expects to inspire confidence in the Yukon economy when his own cuts in capital spending show he doesn’t have any confidence in it himself?

Hon. Mr. Fentie: I think the question is a clear example of the official opposition, the New Democrats’ understanding of finances and what the expenditures of monies should accomplish.

We had the biggest budget in the history of this territory for this fiscal year that is just ending — the biggest budget ever. What did it produce? It produced a further exodus of people from the territory. Obviously, there’s something wrong here.

Now, we could have done like Alaska and British Columbia, with massive, deep cuts, with mega job loss, with tax increases, but we didn’t. We simply set targets and lowered the trajectory. Now the time has come for government to redirect its expenditures to where they will do the most good in terms of rebuilding the Yukon economy.

Mr. Hardy: Well, it’s interesting that a few short months ago, Liberals were saying that there was a lot of money in the budget, there was a lot of money to be brought forward, and in four months the Yukon Party has managed to take it down to $1 million. I don’t know if that’s fiscal management or not.

The Premier can’t just look at the so-called spending trajectories and say that this has to stop. That’s not what it’s all about. I don’t believe there’s a crisis here. There’s just a failure in the will and on the part of this government, a failure of the leadership. It’s called "Chicken Little economics" — the sky is falling, Mr. Speaker, the sky is falling. As a former businessperson, the Premier must realize that you need to invest in order to attract investment. Why has the Premier chosen to ignore the trade and investment opportunities, downgrade the geoscience program and cut funding to marketing initiatives? How will that inspire investor confidence?

Hon. Mr. Fentie: I would remind the member opposite that we are in the midst — at least finalizing an existing fiscal year. The problems that we face today are the residual of the budgeting of the former governments. We are changing the course that this territory is going to take. That is by ensuring that government expenditure attracts investment to this territory and gets the private sector engaged where the real growth for our economy will take place.

If the member opposite thinks for a moment that this isn’t a critical situation — well, if we had followed the projections that were brought forward upon taking office, this year the Yukon government in all likelihood would be in an accumulated deficit position. That has nothing to do with this government. We’ve just taken office. It has to do with the expenditure of former governments.

And this member’s own leader, during the period of 1996 to 2000, stood on the floor of this Legislature many times and said that this type of spending by the Yukon government cannot be sustained. Well, the time has come to take the bull by the horns, Mr. Speaker. That’s what this government has done. We are going to get a firm grip on the fiscal situation of the territory, engage the private sector and create real economic growth.

Mr. Hardy: Old words, old way of bringing in a budget at the beginning. Ensure there is a crisis; ensure that the people of the Yukon believe that we’re in a crisis situation. We have to bail out and within a year or two years. All of a sudden we have amazing surpluses that have materialized.

I don’t know how that’s going to happen, but we have seen it happen time and time again and it’s called "moving the figures". Business people have said over and over that their number one problem is getting access to capital. The Premier had a golden opportunity to address that problem by providing seed money to the labour-sponsored venture capital fund, as is known in the public as the fireweed fund. The Liberals wouldn’t do it and didn’t do it, but the Yukon Party said they would do it. Why did the Premier break his platform commitment to provide seed money for the fireweed fund, which could have attracted large pools of venture capital if there is a shortage out there, as he is constantly saying, to help get this economy going again?

Hon. Mr. Fentie: I would point out to the member opposite that we haven’t broken any commitment. In fact, today, as we speak, we are working with a group representative of labour and citizens, with officials from Finance, on this very issue — the fireweed fund. Let’s not forget that the biggest contributor to this fund has to be the federal government. So we are working on it today.

But I want to go back to how the member views budgeting. We, the government, receive projections from the Department of Finance — that’s what we have to deal with. The final accounting will be done when we reach this fiscal year-end. Then there will also be the Auditor General’s report, which will provide the exact accounting of what has taken place. But we, as a government, deal with projections. Those projections showed a very serious situation. We could have acted in a different way and maybe guessed that we might have vast surpluses in the coming years — we didn’t. We chose the frugal route to ensure that we were not in an accumulated deficit position to start with, and we’ll go from there.

Question re: Whitehorse Copper residential development

Ms. Duncan: I have a question today for the Minister of Community Services. Mr. Speaker, the minister has indicated he excused himself during debate on the fuel tax, and it’s clear the minister was absent from Cabinet when money for highway contractors and the construction industry was doled out. Was the minister also absent when the Yukon Party promised to stop the development of a new subdivision in Whitehorse Copper?

During a recent election campaign, the Member for Copperbelt and the Yukon Party candidate for Mount Lorne wrote an open letter stating that this proposal "should not proceed", and I quote, Mr. Speaker. Was the minister absent or unaware of this commitment?

Hon. Mr. Hart: I was aware that this issue was out there at Whitehorse Copper. We were looking at taking on further consultation.

Ms. Duncan: What I heard the minister indicate was the minister was aware that a letter had been sent and signed by his Yukon Party colleagues that states, "The Whitehorse Copper subdivision should not proceed."

That’s pretty clear opposition to any such development. Recently, a spokesman for the minister has confirmed that — guess what? — the development is proceeding anyway. That’s another broken promise in anybody’s eyes, Mr. Speaker.

Why has the minister broken his promise and broken the promise made by his colleague from Copperbelt?

Hon. Mr. Hart: At a public meeting in the Whitehorse Copper facility, we were asked further questions with regard to the development, and we are reviewing those questions.

Ms. Duncan: The minister has indicated that he is aware of the commitment made by his party and his colleagues that the development should not proceed. The minister has also indicated that the project is going ahead. The Yukon Party is breaking another promise to voters.

The budget tabled on Thursday contains over $5.6 million in residential land development costs. The majority of that money is for the Whitehorse Copper subdivision in spite of the fact that two of his colleagues have signed a letter to Copperbelt residents indicating that the Whitehorse Copper subdivision should not proceed. Will the minister stand on his feet and explain to residents of this area why the Yukon Party government is breaking its promise to Yukon voters?

Hon. Mr. Hart: We are looking at the specific subdivision. In its previous format that it was being presented, it was being rejected by the community. We listened to the community, we got some of their comments and we are readjusting the process to address some of their concerns.

Mr. McRobb: It’s obvious to everybody that the Yukon Party’s record of broken promises is growing longer by the day. In fact, there is a growing list on issues such as the community development fund. Last week we learned that the Yukon Party’s promise to deliver a $3.5-million community development fund as part of its so-called winter works initiative came up short both on time and money.

Then we heard about the Yukon Party’s backroom IOUs from the election that guaranteed community development fund money. Now, Yukoners are concerned by the Yukon Party’s broken promise to restore the community development fund to its original level.

Can the Premier tell us, for the record, exactly what his version of the community development fund’s original level is?

Hon. Mr. Fentie: It certainly won’t be the opposition’s version, because they’re not making the case at all. We did restore the $3.5 million. The winter works projects did take place. Some 22 applications came in that conformed for eligibility under winter works and, between FireSmart and CDF, we’ve expended over $3 million this winter. In fact, if we look outside, we’d find it’s still winter, and we will proceed accordingly. We are ending this fiscal year; we expect there will be monies lapsing because there just simply aren’t any more applications that are eligible under the winter works criteria. We are developing a new CDF program that will broaden and expand access, and we intend to keep our commitment of $3.5 million in CDF and $1.5 million in FireSmart. That should be clear.

Mr. McRobb: Those words ring hollow, and they’re too little, too late, for the 200 workers who have left the territory over the past year, and who might have been enticed to stay a little longer, had this government rolled up its sleeves and done the work on the CDF and winter works initiative. What a difference an election does make, Mr. Speaker. It wasn’t long ago when the now Premier frequently harangued the previous government for sitting on a huge surplus. He rejected outright the same arguments from the former Premier, and now leader of the third party, that he now makes.

Yukoners are tired of that type of doublespeak. I want to ask the Premier about another of his CDF promises, and I quote, "to give preference to projects that generate revenue." Can the Premier tell us approximately what percentage of the CDF applications approved to date would fall under that category?

Hon. Mr. Fentie: Well, I would also include labour intensive, community well-being — all those things. That is what we were looking for. Of all the applications that came in for winter works, some 22 applications conformed and the monies have been allocated. But as far as the member’s comments about surpluses and so on and so forth of the previous government, it is clear by the accounting — and this is final accounting — that the former government had some $78 million in surplus. Today, thanks to the spending spree that the former Liberal government went on, we are now, with the projected figures, looking at a mere $1-million surplus. Those are the numbers we have to deal with until the Auditor General brings forward the final accounting for the fiscal year 2002-03.

Mr. Cardiff: My question is for the Minister of Highways and Public Works. The previous government committed Yukon taxpayers to two costly misadventures. One was to move the Whitehorse Liquor Store to the Yukon liquor warehouse and the other costly misadventure was the relocation of several government offices to what became known as the "one-stop" shop across from Wal-Mart. I would like to know if the minister has abandoned all plans for the Liberals so-called "Service Yukon building" on Quartz Road?

Hon. Mr. Hart: On the issue of Yukon Liquor Corporation, the building will be staying where it is.

With regard to the one-stop shop, we are still investigating our options on that particular building. We have and are entertaining a few solutions for it.

Mr. Cardiff: So I am to understand that the liquor store will be built at the liquor warehouse. I believe that’s what I heard.

Last Friday there was a building permit issued for the one-stop shop, and I’d like the minister to confirm that — if there is a building permit issued, they must know what their plans for the building are. So I’d like to know what those plans are for the one-stop shop.

Hon. Mr. Hart: I’m a little confused; there seemed to be two questions in there, or one, or one and a half. Permit? It is probably being purchased by the owner in that particular venue.

Mr. Cardiff: Well, maybe we can get an answer to this question. I’d like to know if there has been and what type of consultation the minister and his department have had with property owners in the area with regard to the uses at the one-stop shop on Quartz Road?

Hon. Mr. Hart: As I mentioned earlier, we’re still exploring our options for this particular facility. Once our options are explored, we will carry on with the consultation.

Mrs. Peter: Mr. Speaker, my question today is again for the Minister of Environment. In a news release dated January 28, Premier Fentie stated that further work on the Yukon protected areas strategy is being put on hold. This decision was fully supported by the Minister of Environment. In the budget speech on Thursday, March 7, on page 8, to be exact, we learned that this government decided to discontinue with the Yukon protected areas strategy. When I looked the word up in the dictionary, the definition of "discontinue" is to cease or to give up. Will the minister please tell us which it will be? Is it still on hold, or will it be discontinued?

Hon. Mr. Kenyon: There seems to be some confusion over, basically, this issue. So, to clarify, the matter of the Yukon protected areas strategy — it is a flawed process. It is a process that is in desperate need of review. It is a process that is in desperate need of harmonization with other strategies such as special management areas, national parks, et cetera, et cetera, and this is an area that should be thoroughly investigated before we waste any more time on it, so that we can come up with a strategy that works.

Again, Mr. Speaker, we’re trying to do it right the first time and not take shots at it over several years.

Mrs. Peter: Mr. Speaker, in the budget speech, Premier Fentie highlighted the beauty of the Yukon and how people travel from far away to see our pristine and beautiful landscape. We completely agree that wilderness tourism forms much of our economic base. How is the confusion over the Yukon protected areas strategy contributing to the economic certainty for the Yukon?

Hon. Mr. Kenyon: The economic certainty for the Yukon is based on investors and others to make reasonable decisions on what resources are available. No one can go to a bank and get a loan to do any kind of work unless there is some surety, unless there is some certainty that they are able to complete that work.

Under the flawed process, it is impossible to determine who can work where, and until we can come up with that process, Mr. Speaker, it is essential that we allow investors to think about this with a clear mind, as everyone else has a chance to think with a clear mind and come up with something that works the first time.

Mrs. Peter: "We’re put on hold" and "we will discontinue." What these words really are saying is that this Yukon Party government does not believe that environment is part of our economy. The Yukon protected areas strategy was built on principles that recognize standards of protection, integrating ecological concerns and providing for economic benefits.

Will the minister tell us what process he will use to replace the Yukon protected areas strategy?

Hon. Mr. Kenyon: I agree with the member opposite, that it is necessary to look at this whole thing and to meet the commitments that the Yukon Party started in 1992.

The protected areas strategy is a flawed process. It is a process that needs to be revisited. It’s not the initiative that needs to be revisited. The member opposite is quite correct — we should be looking at this. But I suggest to the member opposite that we are at least in a good position at this point in time to go back and revisit that. I believe 12.517 percent of the Yukon is protected — that is the best in Canada. Under existing areas that we have already identified that we will be continuing to look at — not discontinued; we will be looking at those identified areas — the number rises to almost 20 percent. That puts us the best in Canada. I think that’s a reasonable point, to sit back and take a look at the big picture.

Mr. Hardy: The Premier has known for over four months that he was going to separate Tourism and Economic Development into two departments. However, in reading the budget, there is allocation toward Tourism but there doesn’t seem to be any information about Economic Development or a budget in place for it. So, why is there a budget for the new Department of Business, Tourism and Culture but none for Economic Development?

Hon. Mr. Fentie: To construct a budget, we need a department structure in place. One of the areas that has to be completed before we can proceed with that structure is a date that’s just ahead of us — April 1 — and the transfer of employees. Job descriptions have been given out, and we didn’t want to unsettle the public service any more than it has been already under renewal. We felt it important that members of the public service become very involved in the design of the new Department of Economic Development. Therefore, we have ensured that the department has validity by putting it into the budget with a $1 line item. I think it’s reasonable to state here that much of the resources will come out of other departments within government that exist today, and we will structure the department forthwith, subsequent to April 1, when all the employees from the federal side have transferred and all job descriptions and classifications are in place.

Mr. Hardy: That’s interesting, because it means the budget that we have before us is going to be reconfigured again. That’s my understanding.

I’m sure the government across the way must have some idea of what direction they’re going in and how much money they see going into the new Department of Economic Development. So could this minister please give us some idea of what direction they plan to go in, what kind of costs and money are being planned to go there, and how they’re going to resolve some of the changes within the other departments — if they’re going to extract some money from them?

Hon. Mr. Fentie: I think it’s fair to say that, at this stage of the game, we don’t want to speculate. It’s a standard practice for governments to bring forward supplementary budgets. We’ll do that. What we want to do, first and foremost, is to structure a department that is going to deliver the desired product, and we’re going to do that with our public servants; we’re going to do that with First Nation governments; we’re going to do that with industry; we’re going to do that with stakeholders like the chambers of commerce; we’re going to do that with Yukoners; and the reason we’re going to do that is because they have a lot to offer in structuring the new, focused Economic Development department. That’s why we’re taking the time.

When we’ve completed the process, we will institute the department with all of its resources and budgetary items that are necessary, and we can do that with the standard vehicle that governments use every year — a supplementary budget.

Mr. Hardy: There might be a few supplementary budgets by the time we’re finished here.

Well, it just seems so open-ended, this whole idea of an Economic Development department, which is fine. If that’s the direction this government wants to go, that’s fine. They are government. But it’s nothing new. This is not a brand new idea that has come out of nowhere. I’m sure there is a lot of knowledge based over there that they’ve used to discuss the future and shape of this and the role of it. Will the Premier tell us what role the Economic Development department will play in implementing an effective trade and investment strategy, because I’m sure that’s going to be in there, and some idea of what new money this may bring to the territory?

Hon. Mr. Fentie: First let me answer the question about role. It will take and play a lead role. The highest priority for Yukoners today, as it was during the election, is the economy. I don’t think we can argue that point at all. It is the economy. We need a Department of Economic Development that will serve the purpose. We’re not going to speculate on how much money it can bring, but I can tell the member opposite just in the resource-based industries alone, if we are to establish processes where access for the investment community and industry can take place, it could equate into the hundreds of millions. Look at our neighbour to the east: $600 million, approximately, over the next couple of years, will be spent in the delta because of oil and gas. The Yukon today does not participate in that windfall of investment. What we’re trying to achieve here, under this government’s watch, is participation or, in other words, getting a piece of the action. That’s what the Department of Economic Development will be doing once it is given its full structure.

Speaker: The time for Question Period has now elapsed, and we will proceed to Orders of the Day.

Clerk: Second reading, Bill No. 4, standing in the name of the hon. Mr. Fentie; adjourned debate, Mr. Hardy.

Mr. Hardy: It is an honour to be able to finally stand up and address a budget that has been brought forward after many, many months — well, actually, it’s almost a year since the Yukon public has seen a budget brought forward in this territory, which raises a lot of concerns, of course.

The people in this territory need certainty. They need a sense of direction. They need a sense of vision that comes from their government, and it was almost a year ago when they had a vision brought forward through the budget that the Liberals had brought down, that they could work toward for their future, plan for their future, know if they were going to have jobs, know what work was coming forward. The communities also could see what money was being transferred to them, in order to plan for their future as well.

But since that time, Mr. Speaker, the Yukon Territory has gone through some very interesting times. There was a period we went through with the previous Liberal government where special warrants were used to conduct a fair amount of business, and that raised a lot of concern for people. That, of course, led into the election and the uncertainty that an election brings.

Now, during the election, many, many promises were made by the three parties and the independents who also ran. But today what we have to discuss is a budget brought forward by the Yukon Party that, ideally, should be based on some of the promises, or the majority of the election promises, made by the Yukon Party.

If you go through the party platform, Mr. Speaker, you see promises, whether it’s the film industry, child care, of course — which is a huge issue — you see promises on the economic front, oil and gas development, roads to resources. You see promises in government-to-government relationships with First Nations, municipalities, federal government — all the levels of government. You see promises made about the conduct, the decorum that’s going to be held within this House. Those are just a few examples.

We have the budget before us today and, in going through the budget, we have realized that many of those promises made do not apply to this budget. So, what has happened — I’ve said this before but I have to reiterate it. What has happened from the time of an election, where there were many, many promises made, to the time, four months later, when a budget is brought down?

Now, we’ve heard many, many arguments — not arguments, but positions taken about the trajectory of spending, about the fact that the piggy bank has been emptied or broken by the previous Liberal government, and that there is just absolutely no room to more. But frankly, what it really comes down to is choices. There is always room to move. There is money there. We’re talking about over $550 million.

What we have to do, as the opposition, is look at the choices that have been made by the governing party, the government. Now, we can see going through this that the election platform — the promises made during that — and this budget, have changed dramatically. So, using their lines of trajectory, what they’ve come up with is one of the bleakest budgets that this territory has ever seen.

If anything, it reminds me of back in the early 1990s when a previous Yukon Party was elected, led then by Mr. John Ostashek, and they brought in one of the bleakest budgets ever seen. They also said that they had no money. They also said that the trajectory was way out of whack. It’s déjà vu all over again. It is really like listening to it being all resurrected, all repeated back to us again 10 years later. The sky is still falling.

But 10 years have gone by and has the territory gone in debt? Has the territory gone bankrupt? Ten years have gone by, and yet in 1992-93 the picture that was painted was extremely bleak — very similar to what is being painted today. Ten years go by and here we are again and it’s bleak. Actually it reminds me of reading a Charles Dickens novel, Bleak House. The budget that starts bad is going to end bad, and it is going to be one of these depressing journeys that we have to get through because we want to finish this book of 700 or 800 pages.

So this might be 900 days of Yukon Party, Mr. Speaker, but we are in a novel that paints a picture that this territory is in extremely dire shape and that in many cases and in many of the areas where people work, they don’t hold out any hope because there is not going to be any help from this government.

Therefore, maybe you should go down and work somewhere else. Maybe you should think about moving your family, because one of the concerns I have heard from the opposite side was that they wanted to try to address the problem of people leaving the territory. Well, how do you address that problem? You create hope. You instill a sense of belief that this territory has turned a corner and that things are going to be better and that this government is part of making it better.

If you bring in a budget that only points to a trajectory that is a downward spiral and a refusal to invest in this territory, then you’ve done the opposite. Why would people want to stay here if their own government says that there’s no hope in the territory?

I’ll tell you a little story. I worked in construction for many years — 20 some years — and I’ve watched the booms and the busts; the very good times of work and then the hard times when you’re just getting by but you’re making it. This is our home, my home. I live through it. I see it go up and down, but there’s a contractor whom many of us in the construction industry know, and he has been in business as long as I’ve been working. He started his business around the time I started. No matter what, in 20 some years, I have never heard him say that he’s made a dollar.

Now, he’ll come up and say, "I’ve never made a dollar in my life. The industry is terrible. I can’t make any money. The bidding is tough, and there are no margins." Yet, this man has been in the territory for 20 some years; he has one of the biggest companies in the territory. He works all over Yukon, Northwest Territories, northern British Columbia. He has a fleet of vehicles; he has a tremendous amount of equipment. He has a very good staff of workers who work for him. He pays them very well and treats them well. They have a good pension plan.

He has boats and cars and houses and cabins, and he takes three or four holidays a year. He has never made a single penny.

So, this is what he tells us. This is what he tells his workers. He paints a very bleak picture for himself.

This is what this government is doing. People are working. For 10 years, since the last bleak budget that was brought in, people worked. People prospered; people lived. This is our territory. We hunted; we fished. We’ve seen mines come and go. We’ve seen many policies and items and acts brought forward. We’ve seen many, many changes in many ways, but people continue to make it. What I’m trying to say is this man paints a very bleak picture, but there’s probably not a soul out there — not a single worker out there — who believes him because workers look around and they see that it can’t be true, though his words are very bleak.

We are hearing the same story here today. The territory is being painted as a place where there is very little hope, and yet you look around and it’s not that bad. I do not want to believe that we have to give up on this place. This is our home. This is home to all of us, and there is work and there is hope and people can stay here and people should come back if they have left, and we should invite new people here, as well. Frankly, when I look at the budget, I don’t see that indication, I don’t get that feeling, that the people across the way in the Yukon government have that same picture in their minds. They can’t, because what we have is a tremendous amount of cuts and a budget speech that painted quite a distressing scenario for the territory if we don’t immediately cut everywhere, if we don’t create greater hardship as fast as possible.

Now, there are a lot of things missing in the budget that I’m trying to sort through, and my colleagues, as well, on this side are also trying to sort through. One of them is the lapses that happen every year, and those lapses can be anywhere from $15 million to $20 million, which would go toward the bottom line.

There are also money transfers that will be happening on some programs that are not mentioned in the budget speech. Those also go to add to that bottom line.

Now, they’ve put aside $15 million for a contingency fund to anticipate a drop in the transfers, based on the population up here. That’s kind of a speculative type of number, of course. Yet we’ve just heard the Premier say that he doesn’t deal in speculation, but there is a lot of speculation in this. But there are also a lot of things missing, and I believe that there is a lot of money that is missing in this budget. I think, personally, it is not identified so that in one year or two years we can have the Yukon government stand up on the other side and say, "Well, thanks to our fiscally prudent management, we have managed to turn the corner. We have managed to create a surplus of $50 million or $60 million or $70 million, which is going back to what we were a year or two years ago."

So is that fair to use figures like that or to not put all of the figures in or, not even in your budget speech, to identify areas where money may come to give hope for people, to show it’s not as bleak a picture as has been indicated already? Is that fair? I don’t think it is. Put it all up front; show that it’s not as bleak as it is. If there are cuts that you want to make in an area, Mr. Speaker, then be honest about it. They may be cut due to ideology. They may be something that you truly believe does not deserve or need the money; and therefore you would just as soon take it out and move it to another cause that you yourself believe in — or another department or another area that you feel would have more benefit from your own particular perspective.

When people vote for different parties, they’re voting for certain philosophies; they’re voting for certain presentations and directions that they think the government will go, directions in which, if they get elected and put in place, they will take the Yukon Territory.

So, the newly elected members opposite should be quite proud of some of the areas in which they have made their cuts, because it’s just a reflection of what they truly believe in, and not blame everything on this trajectory. Because a trajectory — if you keep talking about this trajectory, this spiralling out of control and you can’t maintain it, the territory is going to fall down, the economy is going to totally collapse, we’ll stay here and we’ll be the last people to turn out the lights, everybody just move on because there’s just no hope here — if you keep saying that, if you keep talking about the sky that’s falling, it’s going to be self-fulfilling and you may find out that you have been part of the problem that starts to pull you down by using that kind of language.

Now, you have to also be able to back it up, and if, in a year or two years, there’s $50 million or $100 million in the kitty, you have really, really misled the general public, because that money just doesn’t materialize. That money is sitting there. And it could be lapses, Mr. Speaker.

Initially, what I would really like to hear from the side opposite is that the Premier believes in the Yukon. I would like to hear the ministers and the backbenchers stand up and say they truly believe in the Yukon and they believe in the Yukon because of this. They believe there is a future because of this, because of the hard work, the work ethic of the territory, because of the experience that exists here, especially the experience to be able to go through the ups and downs of the economy that we all have experienced if we’ve lived here any length of time. This is the north. We are subject to many of the winds of change that happen around our country, nationally and internationally as well as locally.

So I would really like to hear that, instead of always this doom and gloom, and I think that would be a start. That would be a start for a lot of people out there, Mr. Speaker, if this government would start to adopt that position and not create such a negative attitude toward the territory.

Now, what are some of the substantial cuts that have been made that jump out? I’m going to go through the main estimates and look at a lot of them, because they’re quite interesting when you go through them because they do point to a certain trajectory, if you want to use that word, of where maybe this government is taking us and some of the targeted areas where they have targeted associations and groups or people within our society.

Of course, I would like to talk first about one that is really, really one that is felt by many people, and that is the cuts and the broken promises in the child care area and youth services. Now, there has been a fair amount of talk in the last few days, ever since the budget has come down, about the child care workers and the need to get some assistance to them. My daughter worked at one time in the child care profession, and I have some knowledge of the expectations upon a child care worker, the trust that is put in them. One of the greatest trusts you can give to a person is to hand over your child and, at the end of the day, come back and pick up your child and expect that that child had been treated with the proper care and attention that is necessary — that there is love, this is what we really, really want to see; ensure that child has been fed and cleaned; if it’s a young infant, that the diapers have been changed; they haven’t been neglected; they have proper facilities; they are warm.

If they’re a little bit older, they’ve been out on walks; they’ve been stimulated. You can go and pick up your child and know that your child has had a good experience staying at their daycare or at their facility and that the people who are in there truly do love working with children.

Now, my belief is that the people who work in that profession must really love working with children because the wages are sure not what draws them there.

What many people consider is our most precious — it’s hard to even describe. What we value most in our society is our children — our future. It seems that the people who care for our children, the ones to whom we entrust such a tremendous amount of responsibility, we transfer so little of that value to them. Now, a lot of them are paid $7 or $8 an hour. You can go down to a fast-food restaurant and work in line and get paid the same amount. You can work in a theatre and get paid the same amount. The responsibilities you have are completely different. The knowledge and skill that you need to care for a child is completely different. So, why is it that they are not paid in accordance to the value that we place on that kind of work? But they’re not.

Now, during the election, of course, they were very vocal, because I think they finally did hit the end of the line and they feel up against the wall in their ability to be able to care for these children but also to be able to care for themselves. There is an old saying that in order to be able to care for somebody else, you first must ensure that you, yourself, are looked after.

In this case, what I was hearing and seeing was the fact that the child care workers were almost at the point where they were unable to care for themselves. So they had come out during the election in order to try to make their case, and there were a lot of promises made and they were good promises. There was recognition of the needs. So I believe that, because of the promises that were made, that the child care workers expected to see something in this budget. Now the budget has been brought down and what we have seen is cuts and when I go through the main estimates, I will get to that and talk about those figures. But most importantly I think is the sense of lost faith in what a politician may say at election time and what happens once they are in government. That reflects upon us all. I am not pointing a finger at any one in particular. We all carry that burden that before we say what we say during an election, we must really seriously think about whether we are going to live up to that. Are we going to fulfill it? If we can’t fulfill it, if we can’t do it, then what we should do is not make the promise.

But, promises were made and because of the promises that were made, expectations were raised. I am not sure if this is a classic example of creating the picture that the economics of the government are so poor in order to get away from fulfillment of promises made. This is not uncommon. This is part of our whole problem with how people perceive politicians.

That’s a very serious concern, because if we do not re-establish a sense of belief in us, or anyone who is running — if we don’t re-establish that — we threaten democracy. If people stop voting because they just don’t believe there’s any difference, or they can’t believe what a politician says — they have no faith in it and, if anything, they get angry, and they decide, "Well, why should I even vote because it makes no difference. They tell you one thing and do another, or else all the parties are the same." If that happens, then we will lose something that, right at this very moment in the world, people are fighting for throughout the world. There has been a tremendous growth of democracy in the last 10 years in this world. We’ve gone from one-third of the world being democratic countries to two-thirds of the world being democratic countries in probably over the last 15 years.

This has been a tremendous struggle, often at the cost of life and with tremendous hardship in many countries and for many people around the world. We live in a democracy, and what is very distressing is that, by our very actions, possibly, and by our very neglect of what it’s like to live in a democracy, being a politician and being elected, we have neglected it. We have treated it in a cavalier manner only because we’re so used to it. We’re too familiar with it; we don’t guard it.

These are actions we continue to have, such as what happened recently now with the election promises and the first budget not even recognizing many of them. This has continued to erode our democratic structure.

Now, when you craft a budget, it’s about choices, and often we’ve seen that, when there is a decision to make some cuts, it is those who least have the opportunity to vocalize and to protest against those cuts who are the ones targeted. In this case, we’ve seen cuts toward family and children’s services — substantial cuts. We’ve seen cuts toward youth services. In most cases, they’re the ones who have the least opportunity to lobby the government. They’re children; they’re youth. They are often considered the ones who — in some way, if you’re doing the cuts, you can almost look at it as if this is money that is not being well-spent in this area. This is almost an expendable, so we’ll take that and move it to someone we believe in.

But everybody knows — and this has been proven time and time again — if you don’t invest at the early ages in children and if you don’t intervene or invest at ages of youth, that $1.00 invested there saves $6 down the road. Those are the figures that have been come up with. So if you don’t do that investment, you will be paying six times as much.

So when we talk about trajectories, because this seems to be the new language of this government, when we talk about trajectories, what’s the trajectory for that, when you make that cut? Because if you’re going to do the trajectory for the economics, spending habits or spending trajectories, you also have to do the trajectory of the cuts. So what is the trajectory of cutting in the family services? What is the trajectory of cutting money back from communities? What is the trajectory of cutting jobs? What is the trajectory of cutting the community development fund or FireSmart — back from their original promise, back down to $1 million?

What’s the trajectory of that? How many jobs did you raise people’s hope up on, on one side, only within one year to yank out from them here? So, what’s the trajectory of that? What impact does that have on the community where you would have invested the other $2.5 million, or the $500,000?

Now, I don’t mind talking about trajectories, and I don’t mind if it can be proven that the previous Liberal government had taken the finances on a horse ride out of control and you were reining it in. I don’t mind debating that, but it’s not one sided. Let’s have the debate on all aspects. Let’s have the trajectories, let’s have that thought process that you applied for that one area applied to another area, Mr. Speaker.

So, if you cut children’s services now, if you cut $100,000 now, you may, in five or six or seven years, be paying $600,000 or $700,000 in remedial areas or other types of areas to try to make up for what happened at that stage, Mr. Speaker, and that’s what you have to look at. It’s very important to take the whole picture and not just take chunks of it.

When you draft up a budget, the budget is supposed to be reflective of all society and if we look at the Yukon Territory as a society, we have to include from the Beaufort Sea, Old Crow, all the way down into southeast Yukon — yes, we won’t forget southeast Yukon; don’t neglect that, Mr. Speaker — all the way over into southwest and central Yukon. We have to include it all.

The budget has to be reflective of that.

But unfortunately, I can’t say that this one has been.

Now, generally, there has been a lot of talk about stimulating the private sector, that we can’t continue to rely upon transfer payments and the public sector to keep the economy up, and the public sector has to stimulate the private sector.

I guess my question, when you use those kinds of words, is: how do you back it up? Because in going through this budget, I don’t see that stimulation. I didn’t see any stimulation for the private sector here. So where is it? How is the private sector going to get kick-started? How are some of the private sector — many of them, long-term businesses in the Yukon — going to sustain themselves during the period of low economic activity in this territory until things start to pick up again if the government itself doesn’t use some of its leverage, some of its spending power to assist? What I see here in going through this budget is that there is no attention to that area. I don’t see any discussion in the budget speech. I didn’t hear it mentioned, unless I missed it, and I definitely don’t see here in the capital or the O&M — anything about access to capital, which is so essential for many of the businesses. If anything, I actually see cuts in some of those areas such as microloans.

So here was an opportunity to not only stimulate the private sector, give them opportunities for access to capital, but to back it up by something like the labour-sponsored capital fund, the fireweed fund — that would have been very good — or a reinstatement of the trade investment fund, which has a very good record here.

Unfortunately, it was cancelled by the Liberal government, but we would have really welcomed the new government if they had reinstated it. We looked forward to that. We thought it was going to happen, or at least something along those lines. It doesn’t have to be the same name, Mr. Speaker.

I’m going to go through some of this and just highlight some of the areas of cuts to justify their position. I think I’ll just go through the book, as it is. For the Executive Council Office, there’s a five-percent cut; Education, there’s a one-percent cut across the board; Energy, Mines and Resources, an eight-percent cut; Environment, a two-percent cut; Finance, a six-percent cut; Health and Social Services, a one-percent cut; Highways and Public Works, a one-percent cut.

Interestingly enough, when you hear six percent, then down to one percent, one percent doesn’t sound so bad but, if you look at the size of the money spent in those departments, one percent is substantial compared to some of the others.

In Justice, there’s a two-percent cut; Public Service Commission, five percent; Tourism and Culture, four percent; Women’s Directorate, three percent; for a total expenditure of two percent less.

In the capital, the Executive Council Office has a 41-percent cut; Community Services, 39 percent; Energy, Mines and Resources, 34 percent; Health and Social Services, a 76-percent cut; Highways and Public Works, 18 percent; Justice, 86 percent; Public Service Commission, five percent; Tourism and Culture, 23 percent; Yukon Development Corporation, 100 percent; for a total expenditure of a reduction of 24 percent in that area.

Now, capital expenditures, that’s what lots of businesses in this territory rely on to get them through some of the harder times, especially when the private sector isn’t working as well as it should be, or what we would hope for.

Over on another page that I am looking at — revenue summary by source — and the tax revenue, interestingly enough, shows a three-percent increase. So the total tax revenue shows a three-percent increase and, added with the other revenue, shows a seven-percent increase. So the total revenues have a four-percent increase over the course for the 2003-04 estimate. So on the revenue side, it seems to indicate — unless I am reading it wrong — an increase and, on the other side, the expenditure side, it is definitely a decrease, and the government is fulfilling its statement that they were going to stop the trajectory, and they have done the decreases. We recognize that.

Now in Executive Council Office operation and maintenance expenditures, there is a 33-percent cut in policy, and that is pretty substantial. I went through this book. I was just wondering if there was something about policy, that maybe there has been enough policy written and we can ease back on it.

But in this day and age, definitely with the ongoing negotiations that are still outstanding with the First Nations and the government-to-government relations that have to continue to be developed — I know there is some being done with Northwest Territories; I know the Premier has mentioned Alaska, Nunavut and, of course, there’s our always-ongoing relationship with the federal government, as well as the municipalities — policy is always needed and is always changing. But underneath the cuts — that 33-percent cut to policy — what is really interesting is the 34-percent increase to communications.

So my take on that is that they’ll do less policy work but they’re going to spin what they have a lot better. Well, if that’s how they feel, it’s going to be more beneficial — when they were looking for how to make cuts, I found that quite interesting that they would do that as well as the cuts to the Youth Directorate of one percent. Of course, that’s a concern.

Now, in the Department of Education, we have educational support services being cut by five percent and advanced education being cut by three percent, but in the public schools, they have ensured that they did not make any cuts there that I can see, and I applaud them for that in that area. But it does raise a big concern for me, and that is the advanced education. I’m going to take a look at that, Mr. Speaker.

In advanced education, the administration was cut by one percent. Labour market development was substantially cut by six percent. But most distressing, I guess, in the activities is with regard to the training programs, Mr. Speaker. Not everybody is going to be going to university. They’re not all taking that route. What many people are planning to do is take a trade or an occupation of that sort. Especially with the talk that we’ve heard a lot of, definitely in the last week anyway, about the oil and gas opportunities — the pipelines, the hope of mining activities — the needs in that area are huge. Because when you talk about oil and gas, Mr. Speaker, you’re not just talking about the people who work on the rigs or the people who are doing the welding or the labouring; you’re talking about the people who look after the camps, the people who cook, the bull cooks, you’re talking about entertainment for people, you’re talking about the infrastructure to have a camp set up, you’re talking about the roads to be maintained. The trades just grow tremendously, and we need people trained to be able to fill those jobs. Otherwise, if there is a big increase in these activities, we’re not going to have the workers here.

They’re not going to be trained. These companies, if they’re of a size that you often hear that they are, come in and if they can’t find the workers here and our local companies can’t find the workers to fill their contracts, they will have to hire outside, and many of our people, many of the younger people who may be interested in getting into trades, may want to be trained right now to be prepared to get these jobs, to make them more employable, will have missed the mark. And, Mr. Speaker, that’s not something we want, but here, for the training programs, I see a 16-percent cut. That’s very substantial and sends a very distressing message to me that this government hasn’t been looking down the road at what is needed before they make that decision. I would really hope that, as has been said earlier by the Premier, if they plan to bring in a supplementary budget, they would address something like that, they would put more money into training programs, and we would support that.

Now, Mr. Speaker, I’ll go up to the Department of Energy, Mines and Resources. In Energy, Mines and Resources, I see, under corporate services, a six-percent cut. Policy and planning — there’s "policy" again. In certain departments, there seems to be a target toward policy and planning that worries me a little. There’s a five-percent cut there. In sustainable resources, there’s a four-percent cut, and in oil and gas and mineral resources, there’s a 12-percent cut. Now, just adding all those up, we end up with an overall eight-percent cut in the amount of monies going into this department — from $7,111,000 to $6,555,000.

And it seems to be kind of contradictory, Mr. Speaker, that this government would put so much emphasis on oil and gas development as one of those holy grails that will save the territory but withdraw some of the support in that area and withdraw some of the funding in that area. So it seems, again — I look at this, I listen to the well-spoken words of the direction they see the future of the territory going in, and yet, when I look at the budget, it doesn’t seem to reflect that. There seem to be some contradictions.

Under policy and planning, the biggest cut in that area happens to be under energy policy and coordination — that’s a 29-percent cut, which is pretty substantial in that area, especially when you’re talking about energy policy. That’s something that we all are very attuned to, because you live in the north, you pay a high energy price and there has been so much discussion about the opportunities for new projects to come on stream, but one of the areas that hold them back is the access to energy, for instance. Over the years there has been talk of new dams — if this project would come on stream, they would need this amount of energy; therefore, should a new dam be built or should a new energy source be found to be able to supply energy in order to make this mine viable? Yet, we see a pulling back of the policy and coordination in that area that is so desperately needed if we are planning for the future in these areas.

Over in sustainable resources, lands get cut by one-percent. Forestry, interestingly enough, is cut by 65 percent. Now the Premier was the former forestry commissioner and he did some very, very good work when he was a member of the New Democratic Party government a few years ago and was a very strong advocate and lobbyist for the forestry industry. I had seen some of the work and I was impressed with what had been done. However, there is a 65-percent cut, which indicates that either the work is all done or there is nothing left to do because there is sure not any money left in there to do anything. It has gone from a $270,000 budget item to $95,000, or else the emphasis is not going to be on forestry. Just like what seems to not be in the budget on oil and gas. Overall, just in the sustainable resources, there is a drop of four percent. In oil and gas development and pipeline, there is a 38-percent cut in that area. In oil and gas management, there is a two-percent cut in that area. In minerals development, there is a 24-percent cut in that area.

I would just like to read in this area some of the objectives in oil and gas management, "to manage Yukon’s oil and gas resources, to regulate oil and gas activities in the Yukon, to develop and implement Yukon’s oil and gas regulatory regime and to develop a shared offshore oil and gas regulatory regime with Canada."

That sounds good; however, there is a 38-percent cut. In mineral development — to maximize the benefits to Yukoners and minimize the environmental impacts from the sustainable exploration, development and mining of Yukon’s mineral resources; to stimulate investment in mineral exploration and development by providing incentives to prospectors and exploration companies; to generate and compile scientific and technical information about the geology and mineral deposits of the Yukon and distribute this information; to ensure mineral potential assessments are completed and used in planning and regulatory processes prior to the land being withdrawn from disposition from mineral development. And yet we have cuts in that area. The total in the oil and gas and mineral resources — a 12-percent cut. That’s pretty substantial. If this is what the new government is hanging its hat on, again it leaves me slightly confused on what hope is there — if you’re cutting in the very areas where you’re hoping something will materialize to turn things around for many people who live up here.

The environment — it seems it is almost a dirty word in some people’s mouths over on the other side. Cuts in Environment — in general management, a 15-percent cut; in corporate services, a one-percent cut; and in monitoring and compliance, a five-percent cut. There is a total of two percent removed from it.

In the management of natural resources section, the program objectives to manage and protect the Yukon’s natural environment is the number one; to provide sustainable fish and wildlife harvesting and viewing opportunities for cultural, recreational and economic purposes; to promote and enhance participation and land-based activities such as hunting, fishing and trapping and to sustain a unique Yukon lifestyle; to provide opportunities for economic benefits for the sustainable use of fish and wildlife resources — and it goes on and on and on.

In the activities area, there is a two-percent cut in fish and wildlife. It doesn’t make you feel that there is much of an emphasis being put in that area.

Over at monitoring and compliance, which is so essential, environmental protection and assessment, there is a three-percent cut. In conservation, protection and public education, there is a seven-percent cut. The total in monitoring and compliance — there’s a five-percent cut in that area.

Like I said earlier about how the investment in a child at an early age pays dividends later on — a $1.00 investment gives you a return of $6 by some of the figures. Well, it’s the same with the environment as well. If you use the trajectory model, if you don’t do the monitoring and the compliance, if you don’t ensure that standards are kept, that the environment is a priority and that it’s recognized by the industries so that the people who are using the environment, that the government is serious about the environment — if that doesn’t happen, abuses could happen. If the government is not serious about protecting the environment through their actions, why would the citizens? Many people will often change their behaviour based up what detriments there may be.

So, if they know that dumping oil into a stream would have a very negative effect upon their bottom line, they would calculate that and figure, "Well, it’s a lot more sensible for me to contain that oil, transport it out and ensure that the environment stays pristine." Not all people are like that but a lot of people do it by bottom line. We have a long history of abandoned sites, environmental damage that probably could have been avoided if there had been more stringent regulations in place preventing it. It probably would have been prevented if a government of that day would have been more diligent. People would have been more conscious of that.

My fear is that if we start to pull away from that, Mr. Speaker, then it gets slack again and there are always those out there who find it’s a lot easier just to dump it, or do the damage with a catch-me-if-you-can kind of attitude. Unfortunately, those are the ones who cause a lot of negative publicity and create a lot of the regulations that maybe we should not have or maybe we should never have needed. Those are the ones who have caused it and those are the ones for whom we need the regulations. Those regulations don’t at all bother the ones who comply. It’s part of operating and, once it’s part of the operations, you move along a lot easier.

However, my feeling is that there are going to be some serious consequences, Mr. Speaker, if we neglect our environmental duties. Unfortunately, it may be that we pull back from it now but, in 10 or 15 years down the road, we will be paying for it. We have examples in the north. We have many, many examples, whether it’s the DEW lines, whether it’s the military that abandoned many of their oil drums and vehicles and PCBs and containers, DDTs, out in the woods and just left them there.

I, as a kid growing up, like many people here, did a lot of hiking and travelling, going hunting and fishing, going down old back roads or cut-lines. You would come around a corner and there would be an abandoned military site from way, way back. There would be 10 or 12 or eight abandoned old vehicles and there would often also be barrels, and the barrels would be full of whatever was in them. When I was young, we would look at these old vehicles and walk around them and never think about what was in the barrels — yeah, they’re full — we wouldn’t open them. We wouldn’t bother with them; there was nothing there for us. We would continue on with what we were doing. I am sure that many people who grew up here had the experience of finding these old sites all over the place as well. Now we find out that often these barrels contained very poisonous substances that had been released into the water or young kids playing and getting it on themselves, ingesting it or spilling it on the land would have caused tremendous health problems. It could have killed them as well but there also could have been environmental damage that would have been devastating for salmon spawning grounds if it went into waters or fish habitat areas. If it had been spilled into a lake, it could have affected the wildlife that feed out of the lake. These could have been prevented if we would have been that much more advanced in our environmental protection in those days. We have come a long way in that. Since that time, there have been new regulations and way more awareness about abandoned sites — even the present ones that we experience with Faro mine and a few others, like the one up in Carmacks, that have been closed down where they have containment ponds that take millions of dollars a year to maintain. We are a lot more aware of them.

We’re aware of them partly because there has been a lot of testing done, there has been a lot of public awareness that has been shared with people to inform them of what you’re actually facing if you go out into the woods and you find these things. In other words, don’t touch, report.

My concern is that, if we don’t continue to have strong regulations and strong rules governing how our environment is treated, we may be sliding back a little bit, and what happens to you down the road is, at some point, you will have to pay. You will pay, whether it’s in health, the health of your population — and it doesn’t take much to imagine what can happen there; just think of Walkerton. That’s the most immediate one that I can think of that jumps out at you is when there’s a neglect in the water system and there’s a neglect by the monitoring and testing, you can have a catastrophe like Walkerton. It doesn’t take much when there’s a neglect by the government pulling back some of its services by cutting some of its staff who do the testing and monitoring and standards testing, such as what happened in Ontario — because much of what happened around Walkerton, much of it can be pointed to a government’s policy to withdraw from a lot of the environmental monitoring, environmental standards, and allowing it to fall into the hands of municipal — when they do a certain level, but also to do your best ever. This idea that no one’s going to knowingly poison the water that is going to affect people, our fish habitats, the wildlife or destroy the environment — well, that’s probably true; no one is knowingly going to do it, but it can so easily happen, and if you don’t have a standard of testing and you don’t have a standard of regulations to enforce, then "Walkertons" can happen, and "Walkertons" can happen in the north.

I don’t think there is any government that ever wants to be accused of that kind of action. So, for all those reasons, I’m very concerned about some of the directions and some of the wording I’ve heard around the environment and environmental concerns.

Moving to the Department of Health and Social Services, in the O&M expenditures, there is a 12-percent cut in the policy, planning and administration area, a two-percent cut in family and children’s services as I spoke about earlier, health services has a one-percent cut, and regional services has an eight-percent cut.

Now, looking at the policy, planning and administration, that is $4,341,000 being brought down to $3,814,000. Over in the family and children’s services, where were the cuts? Well, the biggest ones — it starts right from the top here in the activities. In program management there is a one-percent cut; in family and children’s services specifically, there is a very substantial 11-percent cut; in child placement services there is a three-percent cut; and in youth services there is a five-percent cut. The total in the family and children’s services area is a two-percent drop. These are targeted areas that raise a lot of concern for me and my colleagues on this side.

In the health services, Mr. Speaker, we have in program management a 27-percent cut, and in insured health and hearing services there is a two-percent cut, for a total in health services of a one-percent drop. In regional services, in program management, again, there is a three-percent cut. In family and children’s services in this area, there is a 22-percent drop, which is pretty substantial when you read what the program objective is: "To provide and coordinate services that strengthen the social well-being of individuals, families and communities in rural Yukon."

So, this was targeted. This was a targeted area, Mr. Speaker.

In social services, for the rural regional area, there’s a three-percent cut, for a total of eight percent.

Going through on the transfer payments, Mr. Speaker, child care operating grants — cut by four percent. Now remember, there was a promise made back during the election, four or five months ago, that there’d be money put in this area. Well, I read it differently. I see a four-percent drop. In child care subsidies, there’s a three-percent drop; under social services and social assistance, two percent. Now, that might be forecasting the fact that a lot more people have left the territory, therefore there’d be less people collecting, and that might be all it is — this projection, this imagined trajectory, where everybody’s leaving the Yukon, therefore we can keep lowering the cost and, eventually, we’re going to balance the budget because, if we get enough people out, we won’t have to pay social assistance.

Yukon seniors’ income supplement — a 15-percent cut; social assistance in the region — again, going back to the regions which, when we say regional, we’re talking rural in many cases — it’s a four-percent cut; over in health services, in physician recruitment and retention initiatives, a 44-percent cut — and we’ll have a lot of questions about that because that’s a very large figure around recruitment and retention, which is something I know the Minister of Health has spoken quite eloquently about over the course of a few years to the other governments, when he was in opposition, on what we are going to do about ensuring that there is retention and recruitment of our physicians, as well as the need within rural communities of having physicians there. I know he has spoken very passionately about Dawson City and ensuring that there’s a physician there and that they’re able to stay there but, in reading this, I don’t see that kind of passion being reflected.

In the health investment fund, there is a 51-percent cut and, again, that is fairly substantial. It is over half of that amount being cut out, and you have to wonder what kind of impact that will have on the health investment fund.

In the Department of Highways and Public Works, there is a two-percent cut in the information communications technology, two percent in the transportation division, eight percent in supply services, for a total of a one-percent drop in the operation and maintenance.

Overall, when you look at where the cuts were, we have once again in the information and communications technology planning and development a drop of four percent. Planning and policy seems to be an area that doesn’t have a great deal of value at the present time in this budget. There is a six-percent cut in production and network services, a two-percent drop for the technology area.

In the transportation division there is a drop of three percent in the highways maintenance and three percent in the transport services. Again, when you hear that, you think of rural Yukon because that is where a lot of the needs are, and again it seems like it is the rural areas, which can so ill-afford some of these cuts — because it does employ people out in those small areas — that will feel a lot of this budget.

Mr. Speaker, in the Department of Justice, we have substantial cuts there, as well. Management services, five percent; legal services, eight percent. That often used to vary quite a bit. An eight-percent drop will have quite an effect on that area. Regulatory services, 14 percent; and in community and corrections services, there is a three-percent drop.

We’ll go through some of these. In legal services, let’s see where some of the cuts come from. Program director, a four-percent cut; litigation costs and judgements, 40-percent cut; outside counsel, 50 percent; community legal support, a 12-percent drop; for a total in the legal services of an eight-percent drop. In regulatory services, public administrator, four percent; land titles, nine percent; Yukon Utilities Board, five percent — again, that’s quite substantial.

There’s something I haven’t mentioned here yet, and it’s not consistent across the board, but it does raise concerns for me. Under the allotments, there’s a line item here called "personnel". In some cases, some of the numbers are very distressing. For instance, in regulatory services, you see a 15-percent drop in that area. When you look at it and go through this, there’s a fair amount of that. There are a lot of cuts in personnel. When you look at it, a lot of it seems to correspond with salary — the amount you would pay a person in the department.

Then again, I stand corrected if it’s something else, and I look forward to having that explained to me when we get into debate, but the concern I have is the promises that have been articulated by the minister responsible for the Public Service Commission that there would be no layoffs, no loss of jobs, loss of hours in any of the departments in this budget, and yet, as I go through here, I find often that what is being reflected seems to be a layoff of some sort or another name, but basically a layoff. That raises a big concern, and it’s definitely something that I’ll be exploring later.

Under the Public Service Commission, since we’re speaking of that one, corporate human resource services, a 10-percent cut; staff relations, 12 percent; employee leave and termination benefits adjustments, 18 percent; for a total operation and maintenance drop of a five percent. And then, again, you see under the allotments in personnel, a five-percent drop. This is an interesting one, because this is a negotiation year, if you want to call it that. The government has, to my knowledge, three contracts that need negotiation. They have the YEU contract; they have the teachers contract, which I believe they just started or are starting, and they have the nurses — that’s my understanding. And you would feel that there would be some revenue put in that area to anticipate the extra workload, Mr. Speaker, but I don’t seem to see it reflected here.

So I’m not sure what kind of message is being sent out or who’s going to be doing the negotiations, or if there is going to be enough. In the corporate human resource services, staff administration is being cut by three percent and employment equity is being cut by 14 percent. I hope that doesn’t have an effect upon all the good work that has been done to ensure that there is employment equity within the territorial government’s hiring policies.

Under staff relations, we have the Yukon Employees Union, Public Service Alliance of Canada, at a 28-percent drop; Yukon Teachers Association is at a 13-percent drop. Underneath that one is the long-service awards, which have been going on for a long time — they have also been cut 32 percent. Now, I don’t know if that’s because there are not as many employees, so there won’t be as many people to award long-service awards to, or if there has been a very drastic change over the last few years in which we don’t have as many people who have been employed by the Yukon government for a long period of time who would be receiving these awards and, instead, we have people who are just starting and that’s maybe reflected by the projections. But the other two are quite big concerns to make these cuts in these activities just as they are in negotiation. It doesn’t send a good message to these associations — one association and another, a union — what kind of negotiations that they can anticipate from this minister.

Again, under personnel, there is a five-percent cut.

There’s a four-percent overall drop in this department. It indicates a one-percent increase for cultural services, a five-percent drop for industrial development research, and an eight-percent drop in the marketing. But under cultural services — and I have to say that it’s nice to see that they’ve held their own in this area, and actually gained a tiny bit as one percent. But there were two areas targeted under this program that I feel shouldn’t have been. One is heritage resources — there’s an 11-percent cut there — and the other one is archives, our history and the needs that we have there, and you see a substantial drop there of five percent. And I wonder what kind of effect that’s going to have. Again, under personnel, you see a four-percent drop, as well.

Now, I haven’t mentioned all the personnel. In some areas, it has actually gone up a little bit, but in many, many areas, it has dropped, and it just jumps out at you that it’s something that we need to have some answers for.

Under industry development and research, the directorate under activities is a 29-percent drop, and in cultural industries there is a two-percent drop, for a total overall of five percent. Business stayed the same, and tourism actually got an increase of five percent, interestingly enough. Over in marketing, the director got cut 13 percent. The business trade promotion got cut 32 percent, and I wonder, if you’re trying to promote the Yukon and promote business in the Yukon, why you would cut that area, why you would drop it so much.

Mass communication and partnerships — again, a promotion to develop a bigger tourism market, a wider range of, as they say, the shoulder seasons, conventions and that, we are seeing a 21-percent drop in that department, and we also see a seven-percent drop in personnel in that one as well.

With the Women’s Directorate, it is nice to see that it is being reinstated, or it is reinstated. I am not sure. I am looking at it and I see the deputy minister position is vacant. It seems that there was a budget for the Women’s Directorate, supposedly that the Liberals had changed and moved into a line item in a department or something. Now it is stand-alone again, that is my understanding, but there is definitely a drop of three-percent in this one and we will have to see if there was enough funding for it in the first place, and if there is a cut, is it able to meet its requirements. And, again, personnel has a drop, as well.

Now I go to another area here, the capital section, the capital budget, and many people in the Yukon, many small businesses and many workers, whether it is in Old Crow, Dawson City, Destruction Bay or down in Teslin or Watson Lake, all of the communities, including Whitehorse, rely very much upon the capital works to stimulate or give them opportunity to work and make a decent living.

When you see a cut in the capital works, you have to be very concerned, because it does have a spiralling effect. It has a trajectory. It runs through a community and dollars are spent in a community. As the Member for Mayo-Tatchun indicated, one job in a community is very important. It’s not that we’re talking about losing one job as something that can be absorbed by the community, but when you are in a town or a small community of a couple of hundred people and there are one or two jobs that don’t materialize or don’t happen through government’s lack of investment, it has a big effect upon the store owners, the small shops in the town, the activities offered — somebody’s not able to work. That does cause problems at all levels of a society. People always feel better about themselves when they have a job, or especially when they have something to look forward to.

Unfortunately, there was a dramatic shift in this budget from previous budgets, and it was a shift away from investment in this area, the capital budget, and a shift away from investing in people, when the government could have done so.

Going down the list, looking at all the cuts: in some areas, 86 percent, 76 percent, 100 percent — pretty massive. But the bottom line, the total expenditures that are being invested in the capital works budget, is from $130 million as was forecast down to $98,693,000, and there’s no way around it. That’s going to have a huge impact upon the territory. You just can’t get away from that.

As a person who has spent most of his life in this area and most of his life working on either government tendered jobs or even with the private sector, when one is not doing well — such as the private sector, and the construction industry as an example — and then the government also decides to pull back, it doesn’t leave you much wiggle room to be able to survive, to be able to pay your bills, to be able to make a living. That’s when you really start to look around and think, "Can I make it through another one of these downturns? Can I stick this one out?"

Everybody has had friends in the construction industry. I’m going to talk about the construction industry for a minute because it’s what I’m most familiar with, growing up here. I, like many people, have watched families and friends leave the territory. Some of them said, "We’re going until it gets better; we’ll be back." No problem. Some of them go away for a year or two years and come back and say that it’s a lot better here than it is out there, and it hasn’t worked for them. But a lot of them have now shifted in their thinking. It was about five years ago that I noticed it. People weren’t saying that they were only going to work for a year or two years and then they would be returning. What has happened is they are saying, "I don’t want to go through this again. I’m tired of it. I’m tired of not knowing if I have work. I’m tired of not seeing any projection of work in the near future. I don’t want to put my family through this unemployed state any more or the stress that it creates in my family. I don’t see a future." They are making the move from the Yukon permanently instead of temporarily like it used to be. When I start hearing that, that’s when I realize that there are some serious problems with us in the Yukon, and how are we going to maintain a skilled workforce, first off? Because those are often the ones who leave first — the skilled workforce — because they can get a job elsewhere.

I know, for instance, Mr. Speaker, offhand, 12 or 14 people who are working at one job site Outside. They started leaving about two years ago, and one or two left, and of course they told their friends, and the next thing you know, it kind of snowballed and there are 12 or 14 people working on the job site now in various aspects of the trade. I talked to them and, right now the way they’re talking, if they don’t hear some good news out of the Yukon, they have no intention of coming back, and these are people who have been here 20 or 30 years, some of them all their lives. And these are very skilled people who we need in the north, especially if there is the belief that there is going to be a change in the climate — I wouldn’t say just the construction area but the whole resource-sector climate, which a lot of them work in or benefit from, such as if there is activity in the Watson Lake area in oil and gas, of course homes will be built. More activity in town creates more employment. It all spins off.

They don’t see that, and they don’t necessarily see wanting to uproot their families again and bring them back, even though they truly love this place and this is their home. When you talk to them, Mr. Speaker, this is what they talk about — our home back here. They never talk about where they are as being their home. Unfortunately, I am concerned that this is what it has become, and that is that the move is far more permanent than what it used to be in the past.

That’s why I have strong feelings about bringing forward a budget and then being very negative about the trajectory and the future of the territory, because I was hoping that they would hear something good and we would have these people back and they would contribute to the territory with the skills that they have and with many of the skills that were developed here through the training that the Yukon has offered over the years and we would get that investment back, but unfortunately it’s not.

In the Executive Council Office, in the land claims and implementation secretariat, there is a 55-percent drop in that area and there is, just in that department, in the capital vote, a drop of 41 percent.

Going through this was interesting because I used to do a fair amount of the work that is in this budget and often you see "office furniture, equipment, systems and space". Years ago, the NDP went on a very positive and strong initiative to help establish some furniture makers in the territory and there were a lot of incentives that people took the government up on. There were assurances that, wherever possible, there would be purchases made locally and it wasn’t just with the furniture but with equipment and systems and space. There was going to be that commitment, so people invested in their future but they also invested in their communities because of that indication that was given by a large source of funding that they could see, which was the government. Now the government purchases a substantial amount of furniture, and I will use furniture as an example because everyone is pretty familiar with this one. Many of these shops started up. They got training and bought equipment. I know a few shops in town and some of the equipment they have in their shops — for instance a table saw is a $25,000 machine and it was bought to be able to produce or to measure and cut to fine tolerances the type of furniture that was being requested by the government.

So, there was that investment, and I believe it paid off for quite a few years. We in the territory got very, very good furniture. We’re sitting in a room that has much of the work that has been done. I believe the Speaker is sitting in a chair with the desk in front and the railings around him that were fabricated or made by a firm in town, Treeline. I would assume, looking at the type of the wood and the very good quality construction, that these tables were fabricated by — possibly I’m wrong on that one, Mr. Speaker, but I can go anywhere in any government building anywhere in this town and sit in a chair that has been made locally, or I can sit at a desk that has been made locally by many of the firms that started up during that initiative. And that created employment; it created training. We trained a multitude of cabinet makers. It created employment, like I say, very good employment that was reinvested back in the community, because of a belief that, if you spend your money here, it makes that nice circle and goes through the community, into the stores, and helps other shop owners. I don’t have the figure in front of me but I would suspect, just offhand, that money will run through the community four to six times before it ends up back in its original spot, through taxes or whatever. That’s wise. That, to me, is a very good way to approach how one would strengthen a community or strengthen an industry. And it did.

So, we did that many years ago. And then there was, I guess, a kind of slight pulling away from them and we started seeing some furniture showing up that was being manufactured elsewhere, whether it was in Quebec or Manitoba, which I believe has a fairly large operation. A lot of the furniture, you will find, came out of Quebec. Some from Ontario, but it seems that the local manufacturers started finding themselves competing with Quebec furniture.

Quebec did the same thing in many ways. They said that the money they were spending in their own province was going to go to the people who lived there and worked there. They wanted to help sustain an economy or an area of work so they did the same thing. But they have these massive shops and they can put out the stuff probably a little bit cheaper — definitely cheaper enough that if they even calculate the shipping sometimes it’s cheaper; sometimes it’s not. But one thing you can find, if you make a comparison, is the quality that we have in the Yukon is almost always better — not always, it depends how much you want to pay — but almost always a better quality. I bet you if there was a study done — there might have been, I’m not sure — but if there was a study done, the lifespan of the furniture that we’ve received from the local manufacturers compared to the lifespan that we get from the stuff that’s shipped in from Outside — which is often, if you take a close look at it, of an inferior grade type of wood. It’s made out of plywood, for instance, or it’s made out of particle board, where you may get real plies locally. If there is hardwood, you will often find that the joinery here will be of a much higher level — the fit would be much finer, where the others may be screwed together with holding screws, this would be mortise and tenon, and double-laps, and it will be glued and very solid. You often find that the upholstery, interestingly enough, on some of the chairs is of a very good level and it holds up very well, whereas from outside you may find that it looks good — when you get it, it looks really good — but in a couple years it starts to show its quality, where the local stuff doesn’t. The local stuff still looks fabulous.

I would suggest that this is an area that this government could reinvest in. I believe there are a lot of young people who are really interested in furniture making. I was talking to some women yesterday over at the house and I was asking them what they were up to. They were telling me that they all — everyone but one — had enrolled and taken the women in trades. These are all professional, mid 20s to 30s, who often have a degree or are doing work somewhere else. They’re all fascinated by the trades and they’ve enrolled in the Skills Canada programs in the new shop that they have down here.

They’re taking these, and they’re starting to build this, and they’re learning about furniture and they’re fascinated by it. I’m not saying that they’re going to all become furniture makers, but the government itself can indicate to the people that they will purchase the products here if they’re of good quality with a decent price, but they will look at it. And I think this government can do that again — re-establish that belief in the people here.

I do know that a few years ago they brought in a very highly regarded cabinetmaker out of Victoria to do an assessment on the furniture and the quality of the furniture that the government is purchasing— to do an assessment on the quality and to see if the government is getting value for its dollar. They brought this man up from Victoria, and he went around, he looked at the furniture — he’s an original cabinetmaker himself, does a lot of other work, consulting work and that. He did tests on it, and his assumption was that the Yukon was probably getting the best deal in Canada. For the price that they’re paying and the quality they’re getting, there is nowhere comparable anywhere else in Canada for the price. And he has a huge shop in Victoria, and he says he can’t do it for that price. So he doesn’t know what the problem is when some people say that it costs more, because in his opinion the government was getting a tremendous deal from the local manufacturers.

And when I say local, it’s not just being Whitehorse-based. I do know there are shops set up in Teslin. There was a shop down there, anyway. There are other shops in other areas that are set up, and people are producing more and more furniture in that area, as well as a lot of the artwork that is starting to really develop and grow, and people are making a living at it and making a good living at it.

But the government does have a role to play in some of these areas, and I would encourage the government to support that and put some more money back into it. But in going through this, unfortunately, you often find that one of the first places to be cut is in the office furniture and equipment.

It’s the easiest one to cut. What you do is hold back for a year and then next year you have to buy double, but for that one year it looks great on your budget. It looks like you’ve saved money. Unfortunately there are replacements and things do wear out and, as government continues to evolve and grow, especially with the devolution, there are needs that have to met to ensure that your workers can work. I am finding in reading this that there seem to be cuts in that area again. My concern is that it is a hardship again on people who have built up an industry based upon the belief that the government does believe in them.

Cuts in protective services and community development are 44 percent and 40 percent. FireSmart already has indicated a 50-percent drop, which is contrary to what was indicated by the government and the money that they were going to put into it. Emergency measures is cut by 34 percent. Again, that is a big concern. Community development — there are a lot of cuts in this area and some of it has some environmental concerns. Other areas are all about community planning, community centres — whether it is recreation or art centres. There are cuts in those areas. I guess the question I have to ask is, if you are not going to pay now, when are you going to pay? Never? Are these cuts permanent? Can we expect, next year, the next budget to cut another one or two or five percent and we continue down this trajectory of withdrawing funding and investment from our communities?

The community development fund has a 77-percent drop.

The community and development fund has only been in existence a couple of weeks, really, by the budget and we already have a cut of 77 percent from $4,259,000, which was forecast and obviously is not going to get spent because the government has already informed us that they’re not going to spend that amount of money, so already the forecast is way out of whack right here, being dropped back down to $1 million.

Community planning has a 54-percent drop, planning and pre-engineering has a 78-percent drop, land development, industrial is 77 percent, recreation is 11 percent, and a 19-percent drop for recreation community centres, a variety of them.

The messaging is really rough here. You go through what they target, and I guess that "by your budget you can be defined". There’s no question about it. The new government has decided to target certain areas.

The problem I’m having is that I don’t know what they have targeted to boost. The words were interesting and good but the investment is questionable in some areas.

Department of Education — education support services, a 19-percent drop; public schools, three-percent drop. And advanced education — I just want to look at this because it talks a little bit about that. The student financial assistance system has an 83-percent cut, and I would have hoped that, in times described by the new government as being bleak, the government would invest in education.

But it just doesn’t seem to be there, and student financial assistance does assist a lot of people to be able to get retrained or be able to go to school. School support, faculties and information technology — two-percent drop. And then a variety of needs throughout communities again — various school facility renovations, 20-percent drop; school-initiated renovations, 40-percent drop; air quality, energy management project, 60-percent drop; faculty management agreements drop; Watson Lake high school technology wing upgrade, a 15-percent drop; and some equipment purchases, 25 percent and 55 percent being cut, which doesn’t point to a big investment into the education area.

Department of Energy, Mines and Resources — sustainable resources, 12 percent; oil and gas resources, 36-percent cuts, for a total of 34 percent of the capital. It looks bleak. The pages are blue, and I tell you that as I read through this, I’m starting to feel a little bit blue myself.

Monitoring and compliance in the Department of Environment — I’ve already gone on and on about my concerns about cutting in this area, but it jumps out at you when you see not a one-percent or two-percent or five-percent drop; you see a 50-percent drop in monitoring and compliance. I won’t go on any more on that one.

Fish and wildlife management planning has a 22-percent cut; fish hatchery, a 33-percent cut; stocked lakes, 33-percent cut; capital works for campgrounds, 26-percent cut, and often that can be very beneficial for communities to be able to get a little bit of work out there.

In education and learning resources, there’s a 50-percent cut.

In Health and Social Services, there’s a 72-percent cut in the policy and planning and administration; family services, renovations for the young offenders facility, 81 percent was cut from that one. I don’t know what they’re going to be able to do with $50,000, when it was obviously identified as $268,000. They’re basically saying they’re not going to do anything, hang on.

Residential services, renovations and equipment, a 53-percent cut; child care service development, 60 percent. Again, there are more cuts in continuing care facilities — 92 percent. That could be that the work has been done. We’ll have to find out.

Ambulance services — they needed new equipment, obviously. That has been cut by 33 percent. And hearing services — it seems to have been targeted a little bit in here. It’s not a large amount, but it’s kind of a shame to cut that. The forecast was for $10,000 for hearing services equipment, and they got $5,000.

For dental health services equipment, it’s the same thing — $11,000 taken down to $5,000. It’s kind of hard.

Highways and public works, French language services — a 96-percent cut in that one. And there’s a multitude more of them.

Tourism seems to have been targeted a little bit — corporate services, an 18-percent cut; cultural services, a 14-percent cut; industrial development and research, a 45-percent cut.

That’s fairly substantial, and again, what has been targeted in Tourism, I find, is the heritage studies, where there’s a 42-percent drop; historic sites inventory, a 40-percent drop; some signage and stuff like that, a nine-percent drop; and heritage trails again, a 14-percent drop. Again, heritage seems to be targeted.

The arts development — 15 percent is cut out of the arts fund, and in the crafts strategy it is 71 percent. Heritage seems to be tied in with archives when it comes to the bigger cuts. Public program projects, a 49-percent cut, and for public access projects, a 54-percent cut.

We talked about access to capital in Question Period. Government had a chance to try to generate some access to capital, which would have been very beneficial for many businesses, for people who want to start a business, people who want to expand, people who believe in this territory. The government has made a decision, Mr. Speaker, not to go in that direction, but even so, they didn’t have to target the microloan program, which has helped many, many very small businesses get up and running — young people and older people, to either look at this as an option. Instead of working for somebody else, they can do the entrepreneur game themselves. Ten percent has been cut out of it. This may be a very small amount but it just sends the wrong message out. If you’re trying to support business, if you’re trying to give a little push or a little kick-start to the private sector, to not even offer the few thousand dollars that may make a difference for one or two people, to me sends a very poor message of this government’s priorities.

There’s a lot more in there. I’ll just skip over those.

Again, in Tourism and Culture, museum assistance did increase, and that’s something I did want to be noticed. It’s good to see. However, it seems to be an increase at the expense of some others. Historic sites maintenance has been cut by nine percent, which, like I say, could affect some small amount of work in a community. Conservation security — 58 percent has been cut out of that one.

In exhibits assistance, it is 29 percent, and that’s technological partnerships and that. There are a lot of areas that have been cut and some of those don’t make sense, especially with the message that has been presented. Some of the questions I have are, how were targets set, and what were the rationales behind some of them? Some of the cuts are so minor that they might as well not have been done, if they were of any small benefit to the people. Others were obviously areas that ideologically maybe didn’t fit with the Yukon Party’s philosophy or beliefs — so be it. But how were they set? How do you set these targets?

I know what underlines everything is this trajectory idea but, as I said, there are other trajectories that you have to include when you are doing that. I guess what we will find out very quickly is what this government believes in because, in going through this budget, I’m not sure. I don’t see the support for the business sector. I don’t see it for the private sector, and I don’t see the support for the social side, as well.

I have to admit that I expected definitely more on the private sector investment by this government. That is what I had assumed, and some of it I would have been very supportive of, especially access to capital like the trade and investment fund being reestablished, for example, and the fireweed fund finally going ahead and creating capital, for people of this territory.

Even supporting a microloan would be a little bit better than cutting it. I didn’t expect the child and family services area to be targeted. The question, I guess, I have is, when will these programs be restored? When will the funding go in here? Some of the bigger questions I have, I guess, that are not explained in here that I would like to know, regard NGO funding: is there going to be long-term funding, or is it going to be going back to a year-by-year, case-by-case basis? Or will there be a guarantee of three, four, five years of funding any more? There are no indications in this budget; nor were there any indications in the budget speech in that regard. Money from the feds — it would be nice to know what was being worked on, what we can look forward to on monies from the feds.

I do know the three Premiers did a very good job in representing the Yukon around the health issue, and it would be nice to know if we can expect to see that money or what kind of payment schedule there is. Is it so much per year? Is it one lump sum? Where are the negotiations? That would have been nice to see in the budget speech. There is lots of talk about the economic relationship with the First Nations, government to government. That was really, really good to hear and we look forward to seeing some really good results from that. Definitely the bar has been raised in that area once again. It’s not the first time some of this talk has been spoken in this House. Unfortunately, it has been a struggle at times; in other areas it has been successful. We hope it doesn’t create problems with other First Nations, if they feel that they have been neglected in discussions such as what happened with the talks around the jail. And devolution. It would have been nice to hear something in the budget speech about devolution that gave us some assurances of what was happening instead of just words that you hear over and over, something a little bit more concrete.

But I’m sure we’re going to get a lot more answers to that, and I look forward to hearing the replies and other people’s comments and getting into the line-by-line and departmental debates.

Thank you.

Hon. Mr. Lang: In replying to the budget, I found it interesting, because I’m a new person on the block, how budgets and governments work. In essence, I’ve done lots of budgets in my past and I found that doing the budget was fairly simple in any one of my businesses. It was living within the budget that was hard. So we have a task ahead of us, not only to budget our money properly but to manage the money properly. There is no point in looking back because looking back isn’t an improvement on the future. So what we’ve done — and I am one of the members who worked to prepare a budget that will lower the Government of Yukon’s trajectory of spending.

I would at this time like to thank the many people who worked to put this budget together. There were many hours spent on this budget in a very, very short period of time. So we did get the product out. There were a lot of people in the trenches behind us who worked diligently to make sure that it happened.

As noted in the budget speech, we as a government must be wiser in how we spend our money and strive toward improving the effectiveness of our programs as well as development of a healthy private sector economy, which is key. These are challenges that our government faces, and I look forward to being part of the team that faces these challenges.

As a lifelong Yukoner, I am excited about devolution and the role it will play in turning around the Yukon’s economy. As the minister responsible for the Energy, Mines and Resources portfolio, I also realize that EMR will be responsible for many of the aspects of devolution. Devolution, which will bestow upon the Yukon power to manage its own resources, will take place April 1 of this year — less than three weeks away. Devolution will allow our government to manage and develop the territory’s resources and resource wealth for the benefit of all Yukon people both now and in the future. Devolution will allow our government to implement policies and regulatory regimes that will contribute to a prosperous and competitive economy. Devolution can also serve as a useful tool to help restore investor confidence in the Yukon.

EMR is responsible for the management and development of Yukon’s natural resources, and our budget for 2003 and 2004 is focused on fulfilling this mandate. Over the coming year, the priorities for EMR will be: to implement devolution of lands, minerals and forestry programs and personnel; to help create resource certainty; to develop and manage Yukoners’ resource sectors, including forestry, agriculture, oil and gas, minerals and energy; to ensure that benefits from resource development, including pipeline projects, are available to Yukoners; to promote energy self-sufficiency.

EMR is taking on the bulk of Northern Affairs programs from the federal government. This includes a regulatory and management responsibility for forestry, lands and minerals.

We are working very hard to make the transition as smooth as possible for all Yukon people.

The transfer of responsibility for water, land and forest and mineral management means that the Yukon will not now have the tools needed to achieve the certainty for the resource industries. I am looking forward to the devolution of these responsibilities as it will lead to positive, economic opportunities for Yukon people.

It was interesting to note that during the numerous meetings held with the resource companies while attending the Cordilleran Roundup in Vancouver in late January, each company expressed interest and hope in devolution. These companies recognize that one of the major advantages in implementing devolution is that the decisions will be made here in Yukon rather than in Ottawa, and consequently will be more timely and reflect what Yukoners want in their territory.

Through mirror legislation, the laws now in place and administered by the federal government will simply continue in their present form but as territorial laws. EMR will administer three of the acts related to devolution — the Yukon Placer Mining Act, the Yukon Quartz Mining Act and portions of the territorial Lands Act. As noted in the budget speech, our government is asking members to give swift passage to the mirror legislation.

Some of the highlights of the 2003-04 budget are the continued support of the Yukon mining incentive program and also funding received from the federal government for the agricultural policy framework agreement. The Yukon mining incentive program is designed to promote and enhance mineral prospecting, exploration and development activities in the Yukon, providing a portion of the risk capital required to locate and explore mineral deposits.

The five-year agricultural policy framework focuses on sector profitability and competitiveness. We are committed to working with Yukoners to develop agriculture in the Yukon as well as recognize the uniqueness of the Yukon and all areas, including agriculture.

Energy, Mines and Resources will carry out the following activities under the 2003-04 budget: will implement devolution commitments, including making sure legislative and policy framework, such as forestry and mineral systems and people are in place, and ensuring land is available for Yukoners and development projects; continuing to improve client services by working to streamline access to programs and regulatory information on Yukon’s land and natural resources; developing a forest policy framework to guide management of forestry and undertake policy work to prepare for the development of new forestry legislation. It is our intent to make timber available as soon as possible to restart Yukon’s forest industry.

Working to ensure that Yukon natural gas will have access to pipelines by all routes, including the Mackenzie Valley pipeline; working in consultation with partners, other jurisdictions and regulatory bodies to develop a clear and effective regulatory process for the Alaska Highway pipeline in the Yukon; treating regional land use planning as a priority and a way to eventually coordinate and balance both economic development and conservation on Yukon lands; supporting and promoting Yukon’s agricultural industry; implementing the five-year bilateral agricultural policy framework and transitional agreement with the federal government, focusing on sector profitability and competitiveness; improving agricultural extension services through seminars, conferences and farm visits; supporting Yukon’s mineral industry; implementing commitments in the mine plan, including working on the comprehensive Yukon mineral policy, implementation and mineral compensation policy, and streamlining the permitting process; and creating a Yukon geological survey to improve delivery of natural resource information.

The government is also continuing the very popular Yukon mineral exploration tax credit. The Yukon geological survey services will be enhanced to include baseline geoscience information in support of oil and gas exploration and development.

We will be developing a Yukon climate change action plan with partners to promote a high standard of energy efficiency and identify measures to address climate change.

In closing, the 2003-04 budget indicates the plan for rebuilding the Yukon’s economy, and I am looking forward to working toward this goal with all members of this House to make the Yukon a better place for everyone.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Ms. Duncan: The budget documents tabled in the Legislature last week are the best possible for the Liberal Party and for the other opposition parties. It’s the best because there is absolutely nothing to support in the handiwork of the government. I have to ask, is it caucus or a select few — one or two ministers acting on their own — or is it the Premier in the corner office with a sharp pencil, and his conscience and his party somewhere else? There is nothing for members of the government to be proud of in this piece of work.

Let’s start with the budget speech, with the notion of a trajectory. The Premier has adopted this notion of a trajectory of spending — a trajectory. It’s a line, a track, a flight path, a curve that passes through a given set of points. Trajectory also refers to a projectile being fired. It reminds me very much of former days in this Legislature when the now Premier used to sit on this side of the House, over there and over here. If the new members might permit me to share an experience that I recall very well, the now Premier who is very fond of this trajectory did exactly as the member was just doing — very fond of off camera and, of course, only to those who were actually in the Legislature were able to see it — very fond of a trajectory going straight down and ending in a rather large explosion — very fond of making the motions.

Now, of course, the Premier’s view has changed and there should be a new order in the House, a new sense of decorum, and somehow from a different view, this behaviour is no longer acceptable. That was then and this is now. However, the notion of a trajectory, Mr. Speaker, has continued. The Premier has, indeed, demonstrated his fondness in the past for projecting trajectories in his actions and mocking previous government members. Now, in his words in the budget speech, he again uses the trajectory with the clear actions of his government.

There’s a crystal clear trajectory. A clear, downward spiral for ethics and leadership, and there’s a clear projectile moving at a great rate of speed up, and a pile of broken promises, especially in this budget, Mr. Speaker.

Let’s begin at the very beginning, which in this case is the end. Our government left office with the election call. At that time, spending had been approved for the fiscal year we are now in. We also approved a $12-million warrant. That covered expenditures not previously voted upon in this Legislature — things like repairs to the Thomson Centre roof. And, I might add, warrants, which the leader of the official opposition made reference to earlier. Warrants have been used by every single government. In fact, the previous NDP government had used them extensively prior to calling the election. The fact is that there is a clear purpose for government warrants and there’s a clear understanding of them and there’s a very clear Yukon history of warrants. No one government has used them over-excessively, with the exception perhaps of the NDP government passing an entire budget in one. But aside from that, they’re used for spending, to cover off the spending that has not been discussed in the House.

Well, the new government immediately reversed that warrant and cancelled existing voted-upon expenditures, voted in this House of the previous government — the correctional centre, Grey Mountain School, Tantalus School in Carmacks. They also, as a government, voted to include in a supplementary such advice as the $2.6 million required for the actuarial evaluation of the MLA pension. We only just got the report. They worked very, very hard to construct a supplementary to lead people to believe the previous government had spent all the money. In actual fact, Mr. Speaker, this government, the members opposite, will have been in office for most of those expenditures and have approved the majority of those expenditures — in fact, a sizable majority of those expenditures. The spending is theirs, not the previous government’s. They’ve worked very, very hard at constructing that.

The trajectory of ethics in leadership started its downward spiral at the very first opportunity — blame the previous government, don’t take responsibility for your own decisions. The fact is that it is the Finance minister’s leadership at Management Board that makes those d