'We've got to find dollars to reinvest in infrastructure': N.W.T. premier
Northwest Territories Premier Floyd Roland on Friday stood by his government's decision to cut 135 public service jobs, saying the government needs money to invest in aging infrastructure.
In an interview Friday with CBC Radio, Roland, who is also the territory's finance minister, said his government faces an estimated $400-million infrastructure deficit that has to be addressed.
"I go back to the days when the territorial government cut back its budget in '95-'96. A large chunk of that came out of capital expenditures, and we've not caught back up to that investment schedule that should have been in place, and we're starting to pay the price on that," Roland said.
"So we've got to find dollars to reinvest in infrastructure."
The proposed job cuts are part of Roland's plan to cut $135 million in spending from the government's next two budgets and redirect that money toward the government's priority projects, such as infrastructure.
The upcoming year's budget, which is expected to have details of those cuts and cost-saving measures, will be delivered on May 22.
Roland was responding to a recent report by Parkland Institute associate David Thompson that suggests the government has healthy finances, with surpluses in the last four years and a paid-down debt.
The report, commissioned by social justice group Alternatives North, concluded that the government has no need to cut the 135 jobs and eliminate an estimated 88 vacancies within the territorial civil service.
Report included one-time funding: Roland
But Roland said the Parkland Institute report is flawed because it included one-time federal funding — such as money under Ottawa's community capacity fund and the national housing trust — in its calculations of the government's revenues.
"We've taken every dollar that's come to the Northwest Territories, whether it's trust funding, one-time repayments, and [it] gets all included," he said.
"For budgeting purposes, we can't take that and say that's going to be what we have in '08-'09, '09-'10, '10-'11 and '11-'12. So when you look at that, and you back out what we feel wouldn't be prudent for us to put in place, those one-time payments."
Roland said he wants to focus government spending on investments that will get more results, such as helping more high school students to graduate, and creating more jobs and better programs.
Earlier this week, deputy finance minister Margaret Melhorn told CBC News that budget cuts are needed to pay for new priorities that were set by all MLAs shortly after they were elected to office last fall — a point disputed by Hay River South MLA Jane Groenewegen.
"At no time during that discussion did anybody say that we were going to try and cut $135 million dollars from the budget over the next two years, nor did anybody say we were going to cut 135 — perhaps plus — jobs from the public service. That never came up," Groenewegen said Thursday.
"So now to hear the deputy minister of finance … saying that we had to cut these positions and we had to trim expenditures and propose reductions … for her to say that they had to do that in order to accommodate the priorities and direction of the 16th assembly is pretty offensive to me."