N.W.T. budget shortchanges Beaufort Delta, leaders say
Reaction to the latest Northwest Territories budget was mixed in Premier Floyd Roland's home turf of the Beaufort Delta, with some leaders saying the budget cuts too many jobs and doesn't give enough support to the territory's northernmost region.
Roland, who is also finance minister, delivered the $1.2-billion budget Thursday in Yellowknife, proposing more than 100 cuts to the territorial civil service and $19 million less in spending compared with last year's revised estimates.
'We have no economy right now. So what is at the end of the tunnel? Where's the rainbow? I don't see it.' —Inuvik Mayor Derek Lindsay
The town of Inuvik, where Roland serves as MLA for Inuvik Boot Lake, will lose 31 government jobs if MLAs pass the budget as is, Mayor Derek Lindsay said.
Lindsay added that those job losses, along with the proposed closure of the Arctic Tern Young Offender Facility, would cost the town $4 million to $5 million a year — a potentially serious blow to the local economy, especially given that the proposed Mackenzie Valley natural gas project is still in the regulatory stages.
"Those numbers concern me," he said Thursday.
"We have no economy right now. The pipeline is still way off in never-never land. So what is at the end of the tunnel? Where's the rainbow? I don't see it."
'This will impact lives,' Roland says
Lindsay said Inuvik is bearing an unfair proportion of the job cuts compared with other N.W.T. communities. It is especially disappointing, he added, that Roland is making so many cuts in his hometown.
Speaking to reporters Thursday before delivering the budget address, Roland said he realizes that his proposed budget could affect people and communities, including those in his home region.
"I know a lot of those people up at the Arctic Tern facility. Some of them I've seen grow up and now are part of the working world and have made investments in themselves and in the community. So it is not taken lightly that this will impact lives," Roland said.
"What we're trying to do through this whole process is look at where the Northwest Territories could be or should be. And when you look at the total package we're presenting, I believe this is the foundation of what we can be as the Northwest Territories."
Budget will 'rip apart the regions': Cournoyea
Former N.W.T. premier Nellie Cournoyea, currently president of the Inuvialuit Regional Corp., said she worries that Roland's budget continues a trend of centralizing government services in Yellowknife, disabling communities outside the capital city from managing their own services.
"What resources are at the regions to support the communities? I don't see anything at all in the budget," Cournoyea said.
"As a matter of fact, it's more centralization, where you're going to rip apart the regions, and particularly the Inuvik region and the northern end of the territories, because we're not next door to Yellowknife."
As well, Cournoyea said there's nothing in the budget that addresses the higher costs of living for residents in isolated Inuvialuit communities, like Paulatuk, Sachs Harbour, Ulukhahtok, Tuktoyaktuk and Aklavik.
"These communities are not connected, you know, so it costs a lot of money. And the evidence is — just go shopping there," Cournoyea said. "So I don't know that that has been addressed."
But at least one Beaufort Delta leader said he was pleased that the budget proposes $34 million for roads and highways, including the long-awaited road to the gravel pits outside of Tuktoyaktuk.
"I've been on the council for 12 years and I've been waiting for this ever since I started," Tuktoyaktuk Mayor Mervin Gruben said.
"It was in the books for years. Finally something's happening here."
Gruben said construction of the road will create a lot of work for people in his community.