Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I rise today to congratulate the Honourable Perrin Beatty as the new president of CBC. In addition to the many years of experience Mr. Beatty will bring to this very challenging job, as an MP in the House of Commons and as Minister of many portfolios, including Minister of Communications, I am confident that Mr. Beatty will not overlook the importance of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation to the north because I think of Mr. Beatty as a friend of the north. He is well-travelled in the north having travelled here often, not out of obligation, but out of a genuine interest, curiosity and affection for our part of the world.

For example, when Mr. Beatty was Solicitor General responsible for the RCMP, he went out of his way to find out what it was like to travel in the north by flying from lqaluit to Pangnirtung, Clyde River, Resolute Bay, Grise Fiord and several Kitikmeot communities en route to Yellowknife in an RCMP twin otter. While in Resolute Bay, he took the trouble to meet with every special constable in the Northwest Territories. He could have travelled by Challenger jet, but instead he chose to take the long, slow route in a twin otter so he could really find out what travel up here is like so that he could visit and land in smaller communities.

Later, when he was Minister of Defence, through his good offices, the closure of the armed forces base in Inuvik was turned into at least a partly good news event when Mr. Beatty agreed to the transfer of buildings, including bed sheets, pots and pans in the student residence, for $1, allowing the then Aurora Campus of Arctic College to be established to serve the Inuvik region.

Mr. Speaker, I know there are financial restraints facing the CBC, but I'm confident that Mr. Beatty's knowledge of the north through the nature and quality of his previous visits will allow him to understand that there are no daily newspapers in the NWT --our CBC North radio is the daily newspaper of the north --that CBC is the only television broadcaster in the north producing programs in aboriginal languages which has a public mandate; that current affairs reports on CBC Radio and Television are especially vital in our part of Canada where few people can read or write even if they had access to newspapers. So I'm confident, even as we face cutbacks of up to 25 per cent in the CBC in the coming year, Mr. Beatty will want to preserve our northern broadcasting system as much as possible and will remain a friend of the north. Thank you.

---Applause