How successful has the N.W.T cabinet been? Depends on who's being asked
Cabinet and regular MLAs released separate reports Thursday, and they don't quite agree
A paper preview of the first mid-term review of the Northwest Territories cabinet suggests regular MLAs and cabinet have very different opinions on how well cabinet has performed.
Cabinet and the regular MLAs released separate reports Thursday on the progress the government has made on the 200 tasks both sides agreed to tackle during their four-year term in the Legislature.
Cabinet says it has already accomplished 40 of the tasks and is making progress on 153 others. The remaining seven are in the planning stage.
In their report, regular MLAs say cabinet has done a good job managing public finances and an excellent job minimizing the government's cost of borrowing.
But it says cabinet wasted a lot of time and energy trying to cut spending by $150 million, a move the MLAs rejected and one that was not among the tasks in the mandate.
'The actual work is yet to be done'
Regular MLAs, assembled as the priorities and planning committee, judged progress on each task with grades of Good, Satisfactory, Poor and Fail.
They rated progress as "Poor" or "Fail" on some tasks the government says it has accomplished.
For example, the government ticked off the task of working with the other territories to increase the Northern residents' tax deduction by at least 33 per cent and getting it indexed to inflation.
The deduction was increased from $16.50 per day to $22 per day last year, but not indexed.
Cabinet says it accomplished the task of participating in intergovernmental working groups to develop a Canadian energy strategy to address climate change, but the MLAs say performance on that front is poor because the N.W.T. Energy Strategy has lapsed in some areas and the cabinet has been unclear on any meaningful progress toward a national strategy.
"We want to see more direct action, not action plans and frameworks and strategies," said Yellowknife MLA Kieron Testart, deputy chair of the committee of regular MLAs that produced the report.
"The government has produced a lot of these planning documents, but the actual work is yet to be done. The government has given itself top marks for completing those action plans but committee wants to see more," he said.
"At the end of the day, if you need a home, an action plan isn't going to get you a home. If you need food or a job, an action plan isn't going to get you there."
Review set for the fall
In its report, cabinet's major accomplishments forecast for this year include completing or releasing two action plans, one strategic framework action plan, two strategies and one strategic framework.
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The regular MLAs rated cabinet performance as "Poor" on 49 tasks and gave it a failing grade on three.
The two reports will form the basis of a public review of cabinet performance that will be done in the fall.
At the end of that review, MLAs will hold secret ballot votes of confidence on the performance of cabinet as a whole and each individual cabinet minister, a process that could result in some regular MLAs moving to cabinet and vice versa for the last two years of the legislative assembly.