Thank you Mr. Chairman. We wanted to discuss this matter and we tabled the relevant document today so we could discuss it in some detail. Just to summarize a little bit of the background of why there is concern amongst a number of the Members regarding the change to this fuel subsidy. I will just outline a few of the points and I am sure other Members will put the meat on to the issues. It is felt that the policy as it was changed was done too quickly, without enough thought of the fact that the policy is too broad and it does not take into consideration regional disparities and the cost of living in the Northwest Territories. In fact, the threshold is far too low when you look at it in terms of what the national poverty line would be and take into consideration the additional costs of living in the North.

We also want to question the Minister with respect to the consultation that took place with the NWT Seniors' Society, because we have certainly heard from a lot of seniors in a lot of very vocal ways including, in my constituency, an actual protest march through the town, with seniors carrying placards and so on. If they had been consulted in advance, it was a rather unusual reaction after the fact. With that I would just like to close by saying that there is a lot of concern about this. It is not saving the government a tremendous amount of money, and the last thing we want to do is take measures as a government that are ultimately, in the end, going to cost us more to deal with the problems that they will cause. Thank you.