Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, the Minister identified some points as to the advantages of amalgamation. One would be meeting the needs of clients and he had replied, the communities as being on the receiving end of some of these programs. Therefore, I suppose they would be considered as clients.

It has been my observation that there is a fair amount of reluctance on the part of the hamlets to take on the housing association responsibilities. Therefore, I do not know how amalgamation would benefit in this regard. The communities, in my riding anyway, seem to prefer housing to remain separate from the hamlet responsibilities. Part of that, I know, is because both programs, hamlets and housing, are fairly large programs in the communities with a fair amount of staff. There are also the social aspects of housing versus the municipal responsibilities of the hamlet and there is definitely a reluctance on the part of hamlets to take on the responsibilities of the housing associations, and social programs attached to those responsibilities. I know that, the housing associations themselves have a fairly substantial job just keeping up with the maintenance of these house and I am sure that the hamlet councils bear this in mind when they make their decisions.

At this point in time I am only aware of the Hamlet of Holman Island taking on the housing association, or considering it. I believe they have not taken it on yet. But the reluctance on their part is tied in with the problems of collection of rents and all the responsibilities of collection of rents and I suppose along with collecting of rent, evicting people if they do not pay. Obviously, it is not good for politicians to start evicting people. All these types of things are being viewed by the hamlets.

Now, as well, there is a similarity between the responsibilities of the DPW to housing in that they both maintain buildings and property. There is not as much similarity to that in regards to maintenance of airports. There is a tendency for hamlets to basically operate airports sort of separately, the same way that the territorial government has done it. One of the things that calls for this type of planning and operation is the fact that airport has specialized equipment and a lot of hamlets are recognizing and realizing that this equipment should be strictly limited to maintenance of airports so as to assure that type of equipment is available when needed, because airports in the small communities in the Arctic are very critical as a supply line into the community.

I think that hamlet and community housing associations, would tend to prefer to deal with separate departments, rather than one department which would address all three. Obviously, whoever they are talking to, whether it is the superintendent level or higher, they would want to know that the guy has the background of concern that they have. For instance, if it is a housing concern, I am sure they would prefer that the regional superintendent had a housing background. If it was a transportation problem in airports, then they would prefer that the guy know what he is talking about when the Hamlet addressed the airport concerns. Therefore, I think overall the thought of one department simplifying a one-shot deal to have access to one department for these problems, in reality it is not as easy to put into effect as it may be on paper.

Another concern that I have, there is a lot of emphasis being put by the Ministries on the downsizing of these departments in order to turn them into one effective department. A lot of this is going to end up in privatization of certain parts of those services and programs. For instance, the engineering aspects may end up to be totally consulting engineers. We are suggesting here that we are going to lay off X number of engineers to stream down the size of the departments and if needed we would hire them back as consultants. That is happening already. There are many people that I know of that were working for this government a few years ago, or a year ago, are now in the consulting business. They are charging the government twice as much as they were getting in salaries. You cannot help wondering whether downsizing is actually being effective in reducing the cost. May I continue, Mr. Chairman?

Mr. Chairman, if I may continue. I am concerned with the policies of this government in regards to downsizing of the infrastructure departments. It seems to suggest to me we are going to have very little infrastructure development if we no longer need all the staff. I cannot believe for one minute, that the government kept all that staff in the infrastructure departments simply for the sake of paying people. There must have been a use for them. I am concerned that there will be so little infrastructure development that there is no longer a need for this large a number of staff to address the infrastructure development. In other words, are we going to quit building roads? Are we going to quit upgrading airports or building airports? Are we going to cut back on housing so much that we will no longer need all the staff? Are we also going to cut back on the construction of buildings? I am talking about large size buildings, like schools and infrastructure for communities, that we no longer need this large a department? I cannot help wondering about that.

But the one that really makes me wonder is this point of preparations for division. I am getting an impression that we are suggesting that, after division, both territories are going to be so small, and that the number of Ministers may be reduced, because they do not have these departments any more to minister. If that is the case, I wonder if we were to allow amalgamation now, would it mean that we would get rid of a couple of Ministers? Because if they are not needed in the future, why would they be needed now? I cannot help asking that question.

The last point I want to make, Mr. Chairman , in my communities and I am sure it is in every community, there are so many changes being made in the last year to the government structure, the government department, downsizing, changes, amalgamation, that it is very confusing for the guy on the street to know who is left and who is still there. For instance, right now I am sure that I am not the only one wondering, who do I go and see in this new renewable resource department? Who do I go and see if I have a concern for wildlife or economic development or energy mines? I cannot help but being confused as to who I am supposed to see any more, and that is the situation in the communities. We have made so many changes to this point in time, we are talking about more implementations, and we are implementing to some degree, community empowerment. But we make so many changes in other aspects, that we do not know what works and what does not work. We will not be able to analyze which were worthwhile changes and which were not. I could not support more changes at this point in time. As far as the amalgamation of the departments, at this point in time, I think that we should wait for division, and see what amount of MLAs or positions that are going to be, constituencies. We would then have an idea whether or not amalgamation is going to make sense.

I am totally in favour of shelving amalgamation to a long ways in the future. Thank you.

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.