Mahsi cho, Mr. Speaker. I want to follow up on a question I put to the Minister of Finance concerning the government's decentralization programs and the exclusion of the North Slave region in this program. The government has focused their decentralization program on those communities that are or have been mostly negatively impacted by the

general recession in Canada, and secondly, those communities that have lost positions due to budget cutbacks.

Let me turn to the budget cutbacks first, Mr. Speaker. Yes, it is true, as the Minister of Finance indicated yesterday, that the North Slave did not lose PYs due to cutbacks. In fact the North Slave has gained PYs. However, as the Minister indicated, these additional PYs were as a result of forced growth. If we impact these PYs as identified by the Minister of Finance, we find that most of these went to the Dogrib Divisional Board of Education as a result of: 1) increasing enrolment; 2) increased student attendance; and 3) addition of the grade 10 program at the Chief Jimmy Bruneau School.

Mr. Speaker, let us be clear here. None of these positions given to the divisional boards were for decentralization program purposes, but for forced growth purposes only. Let me turn to what I believe to be the most peculiar part of the government decentralization program, that being the communities chosen to benefit from decentralization are communities more severely impacted by the sluggish economy,

I cannot for the life of me figure out how the communities chosen here have been more severely impacted by the recession than other communities in the North. In fact, if we look at a few socio-economic indicators, such as unemployment rates, social assistance dependency or per capita income, we find that communities chosen by this government to benefit from decentralization, with the exclusion of maybe Baker Lake and Igloolik, are the economically best off communities in the North, outside of Yellowknife. Surely the government cannot really be serious here. They must come up with a rationale that fits with reality, at least. Mahsi cho.