Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I rise today because I am very concerned about the direction in which this government is going as it relates to the overall economic development of our Northwest Territories. What I have seen in the Now Directions paper is an attempt to decentralize jobs to other places, and there is a mixed signal, Mr. Speaker, when at the very time we are in need of economic development, the amount of money that is made available for the Development Corporation, which has already been reduced once from $10 million down to eight million dollars, is now going to be reduced to six million dollars. It had been our recommendation over the last four years that what we should be doing is looking at some mechanism for creating wealth in our small communities; not simply by providing government jobs.
Although that may be an interim thing, what we have to look at is to find ways to develop another sector of our economy. It is a bad signal, I think, to the people of the Northwest Territories that we have so little imagination that all we can do is out down the amount of money that will create real wealth in the future by simply replacing it in the easiest way which is simply to just move a job out. Thank you.
--Applause