Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, I think the reoccurring theme over the last couple of days and months has been the area surrounding fairness, and the debate surrounding fairness. The fairness of cuts, layoffs and reductions. I guess it would seem that larger communities like Iqaluit, Inuvik, Yellowknife, Rankin, Cambridge Bay, Hay River and Fort Smith have more to take from. Once you take from those areas, there is very little more to give.

In our communities where government is the major single employer of people, we cannot give much more. Whereas, for example, some other communities were you have, like this community, we have renewable resources, like gold mines and other things like that happening, who may be offsetting employment opportunities for their people.

In my community, for example, the only thing we have is government. Everything is government, agencies and boards of government, and thus Madam Chair, those things had to be evaluated on the cost effectiveness not only of the program reductions, but of the jobs lost, and how we can replace those lost jobs. I will be looking for that type of information to come forward.

At the end of the day, my children and your children with its common plan and common agenda and all these other buzz words some people like to come up with, we have to find out exactly where we are going. We have to have performance measurement indicators.

Now as a government, a lot of people in this elected Assembly this year and last year, were elected because it seemed like you had a business background. I challenge any of those people with business backgrounds to find a corporation, a town, a government that has over 6,000 employees and a billion dollar budget and does not have a Department of Personnel, for example.

I think that, at the end of the day, we will have to look at some of the things that we have done, and like I said on my earlier address on the budget, evaluation, maybe a Caucus discussion over the next few days on where we are and where we are going. The wholesale cuts and reductions that we have seen are unprecedented in the history of the NWT, and so have been the budget reductions to date. I was not elected to come here to rubber stamp everything that has been thrown in front of me. I will be doing to the best of my ability, some people might think a limited ability, to the best of my ability to defend my community, and I make no apology for that, and I will not roll over and play dead when my community is being effected and I expect the same from the other Members. Thank you, Madam Chair.