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Legislative assembly briefs Balanced budget planned for 2012-13 Casey Lessard Northern News Services Published Monday, October 24, 2011
"We've decided to return to balance," Peterson told Nunavut News/North. "Department officials have been meeting since June to define their uncontrollable costs, program enhancements and new initiatives. We've essentially said to departments that we would only look at uncontrollable costs." After running a lower-than-expected deficit each of the last three years and this year, Peterson said capital investments would be limited to projects already in the five-year plan starting in the next fiscal year. Unlike other jurisdictions, where politicians recommend running a deficit during tough economic times, Peterson said that was not a wise option in Nunavut. "We receive 85 per cent of our funding through the territorial formula financing agreement," he said, "and that's our core funding to offer basic services to Nunavummiut. We don't have the ability to raise funding on our own, so we can't just raise taxes and offer stimulus programs because we don't have the capacity." Peterson said last year's deficit was $7 million less than expected at $26 million, and this year's deficit is currently expected to be $44 million, $6 million less than originally planned. That figure includes a $25 million contingency depending on what is decided during this session of the legislative assembly. The total capital plan for 2012-13 is $95 million, including $59 million in ongoing project funding. Big ticket items for the year include $3.5 million for the Iqaluit airport P3 project, $8.8 million for the Gjoa Haven high school retrofit, $3.5 million for ongoing repairs to schools, $9 million for the health centre in Repulse Bay, $4.5 million for the fuel tank farm in Cambridge Bay, and $10.1 million for infrastructure projects cost-shared with the federal government's infrastructure program. The Department of Community and Government Services is working to ensure all communities can communicate with each other and the government in the event of another satellite outage, Minister Lorne Kusugak said. "It's hard to prevent what happened from happening again," Kusugak said. "That's the responsibility of those who maintain the satellites. If it does happen again, it's up to the government to be better prepared." To do so, the government is determining if all essential services in Nunavut - including airports, health centres, RCMP and municipalities - have satellite phones. "We found out we didn't (at some health centres, including in Sanikiluaq), so let's get them," he said, noting the department is making a phone list of all satellite phones for distribution, "so everyone has sat phone numbers for everybody, which wasn't the case. Plus they need to be charged and ready to go, so that if the power goes out on the satellite and you try to turn the phone on and there's no charge." He said the phones were critical in maintaining medevac coverage during this month's satellite outage. "Medevacs need to be able to communicate with the airports where they're flying to Jand from. In the long term, we need to ensure these systems are in place so there is communication with the air traffic controller in each community." Planning for such outages goes deeper into the community, with stores needing to plan as well. "If there's a four-day blizzard in Iqaluit, the store shelves start running dry," he said. "So too in the other communities. The stores need to have an emergency plan for how people are going to buy groceries when the debit and bank machines are down. If there's no power in a community, how do you run your tills, how do people get groceries and milk for their children?" Each municipality is responsible for its own emergency preparedness strategy, which Kusugak says is going through the final stages of being passed in the hamlets. Citing $65 bottles of juice as one example, Economic Development and Transportation Minister Peter Taptuna told the legislative assembly that the Canadian government needs to step in to help reduce the costs of transportation and therefore food in the high Arctic. "It's a long ways up there," Taptuna told News/North, "and the further north you go, the cost goes up substantially. A company has to make money; they're not doing it for the sake of doing it." It's a major concern for Quttiktuq MLA Ron Elliott, who represents the residents of High Arctic communities. "In 2012, things like canned tuna and canned spaghetti will no longer be covered and subsidized anymore," Elliott told News/North, noting they will be discussing the Nutrition North program in the second week of the session. "We're told the prices are so high because of lower demand, yet we have flights every day, flights are really full, and freight gets bumped all the time. "It is a complicated situation," Taptuna said. "The cost of living is phenomenal in those High Arctic communities compared to most jurisdictions, including some others in Nunavut. We intend to find a solution for that." The roadblock seems to be finding a consensus among the hamlets of Grise Fiord, Resolute Bay, and Arctic Bay on what strategy to take. "We've set up eight options on how we can bring the costs down, and they have to agree to one," Taptuna said. "We have to finalize a strategy to approach Ottawa, because at the end of the day, it is Ottawa's responsibility for these communities because they were established for the sole purpose of asserting sovereignty over the Canadian North."
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