Thank you, Mr. Chairman. One of the problems, especially in the case of Aklavik, is that after being the MLA for the last five years, one of the things that you see, especially in this budget stuff, there is really nothing in it for the communities. Basically, all the capital and infrastructure was there in the past where they were supposed to have ongoing projects. All these capital projects have been put on the back burner because of the deficit situation. You see the amount of money that is now spent in capital versus what was there in the past. The communities do not have any more resources or dollars to even upgrade, fix, or maintain their roads or infrastructure they have in their communities. They are just getting by with what they have. They are the ones that get the heat, day in and day out. They get heat at their hamlet meetings, from the people in the communities who are asking why the roads are in the shape they are, why they are having problems with the water or why they do not have a drainage system in place that is able to accommodate the communities' basic infrastructure.

I think, for me, that is probably one of the most serious problems in our municipalities - the lack of or the ability to maintain the exact infrastructure we had before. The cost of maintaining a lot of these facilities has gone up. The cost of heating has gone up. The cost of power has gone up. The cost associated with employment benefits for employees has gone up. Housing is another problem we have in a lot of our communities. When you compile all these problems, I believe that is where you find a lot of these communities that are in the situation that they are. For you to attract good people, you have to pay good wages, especially when it comes to financial officers, foremen, people just to run the operation. You have to throw in things that were not there in the past. You have to pay them extra money for VTAs. You have to pay them money for housing. You have to pay them money for moving costs to get people in and out. All of these costs are unforeseen costs. They are not in the budget. In most cases, you do not even think about it until you find out the situation.

That is one area I would like the department to seriously look at. I believe in order to get out of this mess with all these communities, they need a long term plan. They need some long term investment, knowing that there will be money there. It is going to take a while to get out of debt. We do not just work it through one year and come back next year to the same problem. We have to ensure that we have the dollars, the resources, and the people and that we identify the actual cost of what it really costs to operate in these communities.

Aklavik is a good example. In Aklavik, there are very few opportunities when it comes to jobs. There is a very high turnover of people in that community, especially people that you have to bring in from the south. Because of that, I feel this has to be looked at. In order to be fair to those communities, we should do a system making a move, realizing this is not just a short term problem. We have to work it through over a period of time, four or five years. We have to say that we know we have this problem and it is going to take you this long to get to this point, but in the meantime, we will identify all the problem areas. Thank you.