MLAs brace for budget battle

AARON SPITZER

IQALUIT — Let the budget battle begin.

Next week, with the beginning of the Nunavut assembly’s winter legislative session, the territory’s 19 MLAs will get down to the real nitty-gritty of government: taking a limited amount of cash and divvying it up in the face of almost infinite demand.

This is the process that determines whether your child gets a new school, your spouse gets a raise, or your community gets a better water system or more housing for the poor.

The legislative session kicks off Feb. 21 in Iqaluit. If the budget wrangling gets rancorous it could run as long as six weeks — right up to March 30, the last day before the beginning of the new fiscal year, when the 2001-2002 budget must be in place.

At least $650 million will likely be on the table for the upcoming fiscal year. But in Nunavut, like anywhere, the demand from various agencies, departments and communities could consume a budget twice that big.

The sitting will officially be the fifth session of the First Legislative Assembly of Nunavut. It will open with a speech from the throne by Commissioner Peter Irniq — usually a high-minded address laying out the broad aims of the Nunavut government.

But the more eagerly anticipated speech will be Finance Minister Kelvin Ng’s budget address a few days later.

In that presentation, to be broadcast live on APTN, Ng will stand before the assembly to provide an update on Nunavut’s fiscal position, lay out the government’s spending priorities for the upcoming year, and present the 2001-2202 Nunavut budget.

Then the MLAs will roll up their sleeves and begin the dirty work: poring over the budget line by line, department by department.

In many cases they will demand that the government justify the allocations it wants to make, calling ministers and their subordinates to the witness stand. In some instances the MLAs will propose to either raise or reduce the allotted amounts.

While details about the budget are seldom officially released before the budget session, certain information has already leaked out.

It is rumored, for instance, that the government plans to spend more than twice what it did last year on building new schools and other educational facilities.

CBC radio has also reported that the GN wants to slash its spending on the construction of public housing by more than 20 per cent, from $19 million last year down to $15 million this year.

Other than the budget appropriation, few bills are expected to be introduced at the upcoming session. No legislation will be carried over from the last session, which concluded in Iqaluit Nov. 3.

Though the budget will be the focus of the session, MLAs will be free to raise concerns about unrelated issues. Sources suggest that the GN’s refusal to permit a Coral Harbour man to hunt a polar bear with a spear could draw particular fire from MLAs.

Last autumn during his budget update, Finance Minister Ng revealed that Nunavut’s operating deficit for the 2000-2001 fiscal year was expected to be twice the size it was originally predicted to be.

Ng told assembly members that Nunavut was likely to run a $31.5 million deficit this fiscal year.

But the Nunavut government is still financially sound, Ng said. In the 1999-2000 fiscal year, the GN built up a surplus of $63 million, and he said this year’s operating deficit would simply be financed from that surplus.