How can the NWT get a better government off the ground?

MLAs who want to become the NWT’s next premier will make their pitches for the job on Thursday.

The system is almost certain to be the same as in previous years. Candidates make public speeches on Thursday morning, a week of discussion among the 19 MLAs ensues – including consulting local leaders back home – and then a vote is held.

Earlier this week, the Legislative Assembly said newly elected MLAs had confirmed December 7 will be the day a premier and cabinet are chosen. That day, candidates for premier will go through a public Q&A, then a winner will be chosen through a secret ballot of their colleagues.

If the NWT doesn’t toss out consensus government in favour of another system like party politics, are there smaller changes to be made at the start that’d give the public a better government?

Tim Mercer, who was clerk of the legislature for 20 years until Glen Rutland succeeded him last year, wishes they’d do some things differently.

Mercer’s job involved planning five transitions between sets of MLAs, including five competitions for the role of premier.

He says the secret ballot – for premier and for six more cabinet members – is “not helpful” when trying to unite a team of 19 happy, collaborating politicians.

“Every time that I’ve experienced it, more than one person walks away from that process absolutely flabbergasted that they were not selected,” he said.

“They’ve gone into it certain they had the numbers, and what that meant is commitments and promises were made to them that were obviously not upheld.”

Because it’s a secret ballot, you can lie to someone’s face and tell them you’ll support them, then vote for someone else. They’ll never know, because even the number of votes they received is never revealed. Some people see that system fostering a culture of betrayal without accountability from day one.

“It’s human nature to recoil from telling a colleague of yours that, no, you’re not going to support them. It’s uncomfortable. But that’s really what we elect our leaders to do: to make those types of tough choices,” Mercer said.

“Holding the vote in public has some risks. It risks alienating people from one another, creating hard feelings. But I think on balance, it would result in more honest conversations about what the various members expect of one another. And I think it allows fences to be mended more quickly after those votes are held.

“When people come away from those votes gobsmacked that they didn’t win, all they can do is speculate in terms of who supported them and who didn’t. And it has led to some real bitterness and hard feelings that have lasted throughout an assembly, and have led to a lack of trust and a lack of cohesion.”

Premiers lack ‘real power’

One other change Mercer suggests? Allowing the premier to pick their cabinet members.

Right now, MLAs pick a speaker, then a premier, then the other six cabinet members. The premier gets to decide which portfolios each member of cabinet receives.

Mercer says allowing the new premier to pick the other six in cabinet would give them “some real power and authority that they don’t have currently.”

Premiers in the NWT really aren’t anywhere near as powerful as their southern counterparts, he adds. They lead a perpetual minority government of seven people versus 11 regular MLAs, they don’t decide when the House sits, they don’t select their own team and even their ability to tell ministers what to do is limited.

The premier is “unable to reward strong performers and demote people who are underperforming, which is one of the really important powers that premiers and first ministers have in Canada,” he said.

“It’s been argued prominently that the role of the premier in the Northwest Territories is limited to chairing the cabinet meetings, speaking on behalf of cabinet decisions and breaking ties when there’s a vote in cabinet.

“Cabinet-making is both an art and a science. It’s not about putting the six most qualified – so-called qualified – people on. There are interests that need to be balanced, there are political matters that need to be balanced. Why not give the premier some room to manoeuvre in terms of selecting a cabinet?”

Is this what the people actually want?

Shaun Dean doesn’t have a problem with the secret ballot, but he does fear the “credibility gap” he says exists because of the unusual way the NWT selects a premier.

“The gap I see is a growing sense amongst the public that they don’t have ultimate trust and confidence in the government,” said Dean, who went through four of these start-of-government transitions as a member of what is now the Department of Executive and Indigenous Affairs. For 10 years, he ran cabinet communications.

Dean worries that people find the NWT government “remote from their everyday needs and concerns” and unresponsive, in part because voters have no real say in who their premier and ministers are.

“When the public goes to the polls, we don’t even know which candidate for premier their MLA is going to be pledged to or what those policies even will be,” he said.

“That is part of what maybe generates this lack of confidence that the government is truly enacting a platform or policies that the people want to see, because they haven’t had the opportunity to weigh in on them.

“A general election in most other jurisdictions can be seen as a bit of a referendum on the policies and promises that an incoming government is going to make. And we just do not see that here.”

Dean hopes some MLAs stick to their campaign promises of trimming down the territory’s giant list of priorities into something lean and focused. He says past lists of 200 action items didn’t satisfy anyone either inside or outside government.

The MLAs of the past four years, in a report that made recommendations to newly elected MLAs for the years ahead, said Nunavut’s priorities document might be worth learning from. Nunavut’s government set out five big priorities with a handful of action items each, rather than the NWT’s last document, which had 22 priorities and more than 100 action items.

Nunavut’s priorities are:

• ageing with dignity;
• expanding the housing continuum;
• enabling health and healing
• reinvesting in education; and
• diversifying local economies.

“Government time, attention and money are limited resources,” said Dean. “You can’t do everything acceptably. You have to figure out what you’re not going to do and focus on the things that really matter.”

Mercer thinks the new set of MLAs may be about to make one change that’ll help them set good priorities.

The same transition report prepared by outgoing MLAs recommended waiting until February, when a premier and cabinet have been in place for a couple of months, to finalize the priority list and develop a mandate. Previously, the setting of priorities happened much more quickly, before a premier and cabinet had even been chosen.

Delaying things means the new premier and ministers can talk to their departments and have some understanding of what is actually possible – practically and financially – before committing to a list of priorities, Mercer said.

Dean can see two sides of that coin.

“The fear about getting cabinet in place first is then they start to think about the priorities discussion in terms of what they can feasibly achieve as ministers, and maybe leave things off the table because they aren’t sure they can achieve them,” he said.

“But maybe that’s the kind of thing you need to have happen, right? Maybe you need somebody there who is in a position to go, ‘I’m going to have to be accountable for this stuff – and we can’t do all this stuff, so maybe we should pick the two or three things that we really can do within my portfolio.'”

Dean added that above all, MLAs need to “keep the issues and concerns they heard about from their constituents while they were going door-to-door at the top of their minds.”

“There will be no shortage of people telling them what they should do over the next four years,” he said. “Their first obligation is to the people that voted for them, and they need to make sure that whatever they do reflects what they heard from people on the ground.”