Mr. Speaker, it is true that the price of fuel has gone up about 24 percent over the past 20 months and it is a serious concern to all of our people in the Territories. It is serious and I do not take that lightly at all. Howevere, our government takes a much broader approach to resolving our problem. I do not think handing out cheques to people is really what people want each time the price of fuel goes up and next week it will be the price of eggs going up. The people do not want us just to hand out cheques to help them with their fuel. What they want is an economy in the Northwest Territories. That is what we are working on.

Am I doing anything? We have been working incredibly hard and long to get an economy going in the Northwest Territories so that people can afford to live here and live comfortably and pay their own bills. We have done a lot of things, and I think we are seeing signs of our economy turning around. So I take a much broader approach to this issue than just helping out people with little cheques here and there.

Having said that, there are a number of things we have done over the past year. Some of the main ones we have done are: we have continued programs. We have a power subsidy program that continues in spite of hard times. We have a seniors' home heating subsidy that continues. We have, as a Member mentioned in his Member's statement, not adjusted our fuel prices even though they are ad valorum. We have kept them down. That saved people in the Territories $2 million over the last couple of years. We continued the same programs of assisting people through public housing and social assistance. We have certainly increased people's ability to pay for fuel through the salary negotiations and agreement with teachers. We have now reached a tentative agreement with the UNW. We are working with industry. So there are a whole lot of things we are doing to make this a good place to live. I think we need to continue to have that broad approach, not focus on following other examples of writing out little cheques for everybody to help them pay their way. That is not going to develop an economy. Thank you.