My apologies to the Government Leader, Mr. Chairman, but my feeling is that we do have a document here that the communities will be responding to, and I would presume that the response would not be as good if these documents were the government's position on self-government, and we have two other documents here on the aboriginal definition of self-government. Perhaps then we might be able to put the two documents together to come up with one common goal, but I do not see it happening yet. I just wanted to mention that.

I recognize that there is an urgent need to start giving more responsibility to the communities, but also at the same time we should be able to suggest to the communities what they see as a more effective or efficient delivery of core programs to the communities.

Reducing Number Of Civil Servants

I also wanted to mention, and I do not know whether it is mentioned in the Government Leader's statement, but I have not seen too much mention about what happens to the people that are civil servants in the Northwest Territories right now, and whether or not there are any plans to reduce the civil service and divert more responsibilities through attrition where the positions are freed up and transferred to the regions or to the communities. I would say that even if, Mr. Chairman, we cut the civil servants today or tomorrow, life will still go on in the communities. The local education authorities will still operate under the existing moneys that they have, and social services will still operate. It is not as if because we cut the civil service the communities are going to be helpless. In fact, I think it would motivate the communities more to start taking on more responsibilities.

The point, Mr. Chairman, is that because we have a large civil service population -- I think it is 163 per thousand in the Northwest Territories -- and the Yukon is the second highest where I think it is 112 per thousand, but that is still high. I would think that if we were to seriously look at decentralizing to the communities or to the regions the sooner it has to be there in the reduction of the people that in the communities are called "caretakers" -- I guess in Yellowknife you call them civil servants. I think it is time that we look seriously at what we are trying to implement, not only developing positions on it but actually doing something to reduce the dependency on the institutions that have been thrived on by western culture for a very long time.