Thank you, Mr. Speaker. When we did our work as Members of the special committee on the northern economy and reported a couple of years ago to the 11th Assembly, one of the recommendations that we had was that one of the basic weaknesses in our economy was the provision of financial services. There were very few banks in the Northwest Territories, and people who did not have access to financial services were disadvantaged in our economy.
Some attempts have been made recently to try to access federal funding through the CAEDS, Canadian Aboriginal Economic Development Strategy, program. This has been stalled simply because no arrangement could be made whereby any kind of banking service can access this money simply because there is some fear about funding any kind of organization in which deposits are involved.
Mr. Speaker, over the next while, since many of us still believe that basic banking services are a major weakness in our economy, we will be using every kind of device possible to try to provide some kind of solution to this problem. We do not know exactly what it is, but this is a real problem which needs to be resolved, and I will be asking Members of the government to try to help us get it resolved. Thank you.