Thank you, Mr. Chair. I look forward to the opportunity to be part of the 18th Legislative Assembly. With the balance of returning Members and a lot of the energy that the new Members bring, I think we’re well set up, well positioned to tackle some of the priorities in the 18th Assembly that we’re setting today.

I’ve made a list of the four or five priorities that I would see, and I believe they’re all connected somehow. One of the big priorities I believe is the completion of the Mackenzie Valley Highway, the construction of the Mackenzie Valley Highway. This has a trickle-down effect. It will create some jobs and training opportunities for a lot of our young people. It will help address the high cost of living up and down the valley. It will connect all of the NWT. It will increase tourism. There will be a lot of training opportunities that I’ve stated for youth.

We’ve seen some of the benefits of work like this that goes on with the construction of the Inuvik-Tuk Highway, and some of the numbers we got back, I think… I believe our income support numbers were down because people were working. Our rental revenue for housing was up because people were working. People want to work; we just have to give them the opportunity to work.

One of the other priorities I see is we need to work to settle the land claims. It does give certainty on the ownership of land. It gives certainty to potential investors, and we need to tap into that and move forward with that.

We have a great opportunity here to work with the new federal government. I listened closely to a lot of the campaign, I wouldn’t call them promises, but a lot of the campaign material that they had. They had talked about huge infrastructure investment, and we have to make sure that we’re in a position to receive some of that money because we do need it up here, and I think they’ll recognize that. The fact that we have a sitting MP that’s part of the government body I think would work in our favour. We need to tap into that and utilize that.

The declining CMHC funding, there’s a common theme I’ve heard so far about the houses and housing and the lack of housing. One of the challenges that we’ve faced in the last number of years was the declining CMHC funding. Again, here’s an opportunity to have dialogue with the federal government and see if there’s a way that they recognize our unique situation in all three territories and the challenges that we face providing housing. If they were to put a freeze on the declining CMHC funding, then we might be in a position where we can add new public housing units. Because it’s a lot of the Members that are coming back and if you’ve listened to the proceedings in the House, you’ll notice we talk a lot about replacement public housing units, and that’s because the challenge we face with the declining CMHC funding. We’ve been very fortunate in the last, I think in the life of the 17th Assembly. I believe there was $6 million that this government put towards the provision of housing across the Northwest Territories to help offset some of the money that we were losing with the declining CMHC funding. Again, here’s an opportunity to work with a new federal government that seems to have a new attitude, and we’re looking forward to that opportunity.

Municipal funding. We heard it this weekend, and we did the formula funding review at the end of the last Assembly because we wanted to be sure that we were in a position to seek any additional funds if the opportunity was available. We heard this weekend that they feel that they need $40 million to address their community needs, and we recognize that, and we will have to identify that funding and work to get that funding to pass it on to the communities. Again, there is a trickle-down effect, because if communities get more funding, then they may be able to pass that on to their residents in their community by making some jobs available and improving the infrastructure they have there. We have been very fortunate in the last few years through the investments and federal government that we were able to pass some of the infrastructure money on to the communities, but we hear from the communities that that’s just not quite enough, and they’re challenged to maintain a lot of the infrastructure that they’re receiving. So, we need to work with them to try and find ways that we can address the funding needs.

Finally, Mr. Chair, our most valuable resources – and it’s been stated before – across the Northwest Territories are our youth and our seniors and the people of the Northwest Territories. With the seniors, we heard about the concerns with the senior housing. Again, that can go back to the declining CMHC funding, and if they were to put a freeze on that funding, then we may be able to invest more into the provision of funding for seniors to keep them in their own homes. So, all the priorities that I’ve listed I believe are all connected.

Our youth. Having worked with our youth for the last number of years and interacting with them, I’m really positive about the future of the NWT. We’re developing a lot of really good leaders amongst the youth, and I believe in a few years there’ll be 19 of them sitting in here and looking after the needs of the Northwest Territories.

So, Mr. Chair, I didn’t take up very much time, but I do want to close by quoting a couple of lines from our Members’ conduct guidelines, and we need to take these to heart. I believe we’re going to sign these and they are going to be tabled so the public can have access to them. The one line I’d like to quote is: “To the public, I owe responsibility to work for the well-being of all residents of the Northwest Territories; and to my colleagues, I owe fairness and respect for our differences and the duty to work together for the good will of the common good.” Mr. Chair, in this case the common good are the people of the Northwest Territories and the Northwest Territories itself. So, I thank you very much.