Mr. Chairman, yes, the point I want to make is that we all got into office knowing that there were going to be major cuts, that there were going to be major problems when it came to revenues to be able to do things, that in some cases we are not going to be able to carry some things out.
We are talking about trying to find an order here that everybody has to feel a little bit of the hurt that is going to come along with these cuts in regards to ridings, employees of this government, ourselves as MLA's, cuts in regards to the wages of our civil servants and also a new way of doing government. We have all come in here with the intentions of this as a new order of government, we were going to be fair, we would deal with this problem with the deficit, all together, united, but from what I see and what we have been telling our constituents when we go home is that, "oh, it's just going to be there for a short time, sorry you can't have these projects, you will have to hold up, until we are able to get out of this problem of the deficit and try to get back onto the road to recovery."
But on the other hand what we see here is that for some regions, such as my region, which my unemployment rates are almost double the national average and also in regards to projects. One of my ridings, Aklavik, received $300,000 in capital, yet with the decision by FMB, or Cabinet, or whoever, projects can be moved around by simple decision within that House, yet ourselves as members of this House, we went through a long process of reviewing the projects, cutting projects out, saying we had to cut ten here, in some cases fifteen percent, in all the different envelopes to come up with something that we can all live with. But to be fair to the general public that we represent we made an attempt to state that we are going to do things differently.
The common way of doing government is over. Reality is in front of us, we have a deficit, yet from these projects having funds moved around, projects added to the budget after it has been passed, is not what we are telling the government, it is not going to happen. Yet the public out there, and the people we are cutting, especially the elders, the old folks homes in regards to fuel subsidies and all these others things that affect the peoples lives, day-to-day, and yet we still do this, makes we wonder, realistically are we here to the benefit of the people we represent in our constituencies, depends what riding you are in, but I think we have to find a new order of doing government here and realize it, that the number one priority of this government and this House is dealing with the deficit. If there are monies which are not spent, they go back to bring down the deficit, not just say, "Well, there's money there, let's spend it". We cannot afford to spend like we use to, I think that is the message we have to put out to the public.
We cannot afford to continue to carry on the way the previous government has, or the previous executive has, because reality is we are saying one thing to our people and we are doing another thing in this House. Thank you.