Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I start off by sending greetings back home to my family. Mr. Speaker, I have mentioned at times in this House about the way we do business as a government and I ask myself, and in these areas, what is empowerment when it comes to the way we do business? Are we truly empowering the people of our communities, how they do their work? Are we empowering the paraments within our communities away from headquarters to be able to get the job done efficiently and effectively?

Recently, I have heard concerns being raised in our community, since we started travelling down this course of budget reductions and a community empowerment. Some departments within the community are saying that Yellowknife is actually taking back, not speaking of the city, but headquarters is taking back, some of the controls. I have some concern with that when we talk about empowering our communities, about letting the people make the decisions in our communities. We say on one hand but on the other we make sure the knot is good and tight and we, as politicians here, are seeming to be the ones that lead the charge, we are the ones pushing for the change that is happening or the change that is not happening.

I think, Mr. Speaker, that we, as politicians, have to rise to the occasion and let people know that, yes, we are going to make some change and sometimes it takes a little while to get that change happening in the way we would like to see it happen but I think we, as politicians, need to start telling our staff, our hierarchy, especially in headquarters that community empowerment means just that. Communities, people in our communities. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.