Richard Gleeson
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Apr 05/00) - Regular MLAs sent the government a stern message last Thursday -- leaders must lead by example.

The government had hoped to pass a bill that would have provided $3,781,500 to cover unexpected expenses incurred over the last four months of the last fiscal year, which ended Friday.

But when it came time to consider the bill, regular MLAs used their voting power to cut $160,000 from the $1 million that would have been provided for cabinet operations.

"How do you justify increasing personnel and increasing your expenses in government when you're putting off essential services to the public?" said Charles Dent. The Frame Lake MLA was referring to the government's recent decision to cut $10 million in capital spending and the end of the Skills for Jobs training program.

Finance Minister Joe Handley said it was a message he had heard many times during debate of the mini-budget the government brought forward to cover the next four months.

"I don't think (the cut) sent any sensible message to government in my view," said Handley. "We already got that message. This was a little bit of overkill."

Great Slave MLA Bill Braden introduced the two motions that brought about the cut.

"That part of the department had grown by some $8 million from the original budget," said Braden when asked why he supported the cut. "Understandably, there were a number of large ticket items that were not in their control. But I felt the government could have looked internally and used existing resources or deferred some of those initiatives."

Dent said a funding request for an increase in the housing and travel budget for out-of-town cabinet ministers served as an example of the belt-tightening yet to be done by government. There are no more out-of-town cabinet ministers than there were when the 1999-2000 budget was written.

In defending the spending, Handley said it's too late to be making cuts.

"The money that is in this supplementary appropriation is essentially spent or committed," said Handley.

The Finance Minister said a tight legislative schedule prevented the government from bringing the bill forward sooner.

Sandy Lee was the only regular MLA who voted against the motion. All of cabinet abstained. If cabinet ministers had voted, the motion would have passed by a vote of 8-7, since. Cabinet Minister Jim Antoine was on a trade mission to the Yukon and Alaska.

On Friday, Lee explained her reasons for voting against the motion to cut. Lee said she supported fiscal restraint, "but I also believe this cannot be achieved by a piecemeal approach of a minuscule reduction of an arbitrarily picked number from a small section of one department," said the Range Lake MLA.