Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have some general comments I want to make on MACA. They have to do with your departmental mandate, goals and definitive

objectives. I have always had a concern with this department because I see this department as the territorial government department that deals with going into the communities, such as some of the constituencies that I represent, which are unincorporated, to attempt to help them get organized in one form or another. There is nothing in your goals or definitive objectives to deal with that. Perhaps that is what the problem is in some of my small communities.

How long has this territorial government been in existence? Why have these communities not been helped in getting themselves organized? The only group that helped them was the Dene Nation when they sent in some community development workers to help these communities get organized. Presently, the Deh Cho tribal council is going into these communities to help them organize. These are funds that the tribal councils get on their own because of their treaty organizations. The job of this department is to help these communities do exactly what the tribal councils are trying to do. I am very puzzled. I have been trying to figure out this department since my election. How long has this department been in existence, and why is this government not helping these communities?

I applaud the efforts of the Deh Cho tribal council because they have identified the problem in these communities and they are going in helping these communities get organized, with no funding from your department at all. This is your job, according to these definitive objectives and goals. I would like to see this department, in one way or another, help some of these communities get on their feet. The only items I see in your goals, mandates and definitive objectives are tools for the communities. I think you have to go deeper than that into real community development and get the ideas from the communities on how things should run. The bands and the tribal council are going back into our own Dene history to see how we conducted ourselves in the past to try to build on that. That is a true consensus of government at the community level, where you go back to your roots and build on that.

There seems to be no cooperation between what the bands, tribal councils and the government are trying to do. If we could coordinate these efforts, I think you will see some of these communities come a long way. Right now there is no cooperation. I do not see any plans at all to try to help the communities in the way in which I have been trying to explain. I would like to suggest this department meet with the Deh Cho tribal council to see what they are doing, and meet with these community representatives, through the tribal council, to discover the goals they are trying to achieve in trying to get these governments more organized. This would be helpful. I am talking about the philosophy of this department. I do not see how the philosophy here, in its present form, will help some of these smaller communities unless there is coordination and cooperation with the Deh Cho tribal council and these smaller communities. Mahsi.