'A better financial footing,' says Robert C. McLeod about N.W.T. budget

The Government of the Northwest Territories released its 2016/17 budget on Wednesday. This was the first budget headed by Robert C. McLeod, who was appointed finance minister in December.

McLeod sat down with Loren McGinnis, the host of CBC Radio's The Trailbreaker, to talk about the budget.

This interview has been edited for length. 

Some regular MLAs are saying there was a change in messaging in the budget. In the months setting up budget time, the alarm was sounded, the concept of austerity, and then the budget delivered yesterday didn't necessarily reflect that. How would you characterize this budget and would you accept that there was a change in the messaging?

Well, I don't know if there was a change in messaging. We were very consistent right from the start, saying that we had to look at finding some savings and we used the $150-million figure for a bit. I think what you saw yesterday was a result of the work that was done between the departments, between ourselves, and committee.

If the regular MLAs say it was all 'doom and gloom' at the start there, I think we were just telling the truth.

How would you characterize this budget?

I couldn't characterize it in one word, but it is a budget that's starting us off to a better financial footing.

Out of the $150 million that you're trying to find in either savings or increased revenues, you managed to find $53 million in spending reductions. Can you give us some examples of some of the big items where you found that savings?

One of the bigger items was the $3 million subsidy we pay to the Yellowknife airports [with addition of airport improvement fees, raising landing fees for airlines, etc.]. And then we had a number of other items we went through with all the different departments. So a collection of all the smaller items made up the figure.

What about the $2.5 million savings in government staffers' travel, telecommunications, fees, contracts and other purchases? What do you anticipate will be the impact of taking that money out of the budget?

The departments obviously gave it some thought and realized they were able to do the work they needed to do without so much travelling. And with technology the way it is nowadays, you may not need to travel as much.

How will this budget affect people in their day-to-day lives?

If you look further down the road, we'd like to think that with this budget and with the potential savings that we have, that we're able to invest it into some much needed infrastructure and come up with our cost share for any federal dollars that might come our way. Then it should have a trickle down effect. So if we're able to get infrastructure, which usually is used to stimulate the economy, then we can get some projects into the communities so some of the people can be at work. We're setting ourselves up to make opportunities available.

These savings amount to 45 per cent of the reduced expenditure and new revenues that you say you need to find before 2020. Where do you expect that other 55 per cent to come from in future years?

That's the work that we're starting to do right now. Our departments are all doing some work now as to identify further reductions — if we can find any — and we'll work with committee in September during our business planning and that other 55 per cent will come forward next year.

As you hear from the public and regular MLAs, what is your openness now to make changes to what came out in the budget yesterday?

We'll go through the budget process for the next four weeks and we'll work with committee and there will be some back and forth and we'll listen to what they have to say and they'll listen to what we have to say, and hopefully we can come up with a product at the end of the day that is acceptable to the assembly.

Will the final budget be different from what was presented?

Well, we don't know that until we get into the actual budget process itself. I know the regular MLAs have some priorities and they'd like to see those dealt with, but that's part of the work in committee. We do the debate on the budget in the next four weeks and see what kind of product we come up with.