I have a problem with reforestation because if you go to my area, you have the trees that just grow naturally; you don't need to plant them so there's no cost in that.

Mr. Speaker, another area that I would like to touch on is where we are today; this government has changed quite a bit since our term began. This is the last time that we will meet here to talk about the budget. There's been amalgamation, there's been downsizing, and there have been a lot of different types of initiatives that the government has done to date. I would like to commend the government for that. I think they've made some very tough decisions and some very hard decisions to try to make the government more efficient and more effective.

We're here, Mr. Speaker, to provide programs and services to the people in the communities and one way of doing it is to try to operate as efficiently and effectively as possible. I think the government has achieved some of that by amalgamation and downsizing. This amalgamation and downsizing was as a result of the previous government's Beatty report. That was transition planning. One of the recommendations that the Standing Committee on Finance made is "...this government and this Assembly develop some transition plans for the new government that will be coming into place." There are a lot of initiatives that this government is working on such as in Mr. Nerysoo's job, where the Finance Minister mentioned that he has a lot of work to be done in terms of the northern accord, oil and gas, the minerals, potential diamond mines; we have a lot of things on the go here and if we don't have a plan in place for the next government, whoever gets elected and sits here next year, they're going to have a difficult time starting from scratch. The recommendation from the Standing Committee on Finance is intended to help whoever will be sitting in these Chambers, whoever is going to be in the government, and mainly for the people of the Northwest Territories who we're here to provide programs and services for.

We should be thinking ahead because we have a younger generation coming up and we're trying to make life good for everybody in the north, not only today while we're elected but in the future as well. With that, I would like to say that this is a good resolution that came from the Standing Committee on Finance for looking into the future.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I just wanted to once again congratulate the Minister of Finance for his budget report. I really appreciate working with him as the chairman of the Standing Committee on Finance. Mahsi.

---Applause