Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just a short, brief statement. I think amalgamation in a time of non-restraint would be a good idea. Having a housing corporation district office established in the community of Inuvik, transportation being there and public works already being ravaged by a government reduction exercise, I am very concerned with what is going to be left.

I ask another question, how much reduction can a community take? Once you have a healthy community with good businesses and lots of private development, you can sustain that better than you can if you are depending upon government. Unfortunately the community I represent, Inuvik, has become heavily dependant upon government, and we have for a number of years been taking cuts, and in the last year we took quite heavily, 78 positions. That is not counting the non-government organizations that have had to reduce their sizes, that is purely government positions.

When it comes to the community of Inuvik, we have taken hits, we have taken cuts. When you look at it, we have done so many changes that we need to take a look at what we are doing now, and what programs we are running before we make any more. We have not seen what we look like lately. I think it only makes good government to stop and see what is left of us, what are we functioning at. Have we received that, or not? Are we going where we need to be going? I think that right now I am starting to see the real negative effects that reductions have on a community. That would be my point.

We can say we want to be more efficient, but there comes a certain point when you reduce so much that whoever is left, the jobs they are doing, they will not be able to do it to the best of their ability. I know guys that are working a number of different jobs now because their position has taken over other positions, because those within the department have been reduced. For example, in transportation we have weigh scale officers who check the ice roads for thickness. They do sign posts. They do contract checks. They do a whole number of things now instead of doing the job they were hired to do. Can we be so efficient that we create problems? I think that is something that we need to sit and take a look at. I said I would be brief and my counterpart here, Mr. Miltenberger has reminded me of that, and I will allow him to have the joy of my silence. Thank you.