Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I am not going to go over the figures that the department has laid out in their budget. I see that a number of Members are covering that. I am going to approach it from a little bit of a different point of view right from the start with the the vision of the department. I can sympathize with the department with the many different areas that they have to cover and some of the very fundamental services that have to be provided to the people.

However, when you look at the vision of the department, self-reliant, healthy, well-educated individuals, families and communities doing their part improving the quality of their own lives, I think that whole vision says an awful lot to the people of the Territory if we can enforce that in some way.

The way I look at health and social services in today's age, unless we do get our people educated and get them to take some responsibility for their own lives, for themselves, for their kids, we are going to have a hard time keeping up with the cost of providing the service. We can throw as much money as we are throwing into the highway system and unless we get the people educated and be prepared to be responsible for their own lives and their kids, we may not be able to keep up regardless of how much money we put to it. That is not going to get any easier.

The way I see it in this whole Territory, as we open up the Territory to economic development, increase the populations, increase the payrolls, the money out there, all that has a very strong bearing on our ability to deliver social programs. I think it is going to be critical that we supply the education to the people and make it in the forefront as much as we possibly can for people to take some responsibility.

I see it as being a big challenge too and the people who are trying to provide our programs today, I think there is an awful lot of overload in the people we have out there right now. We are operating short-staffed whether it is doctors, whether it is nurses, assistants. We have an awful lot of shortages in non-governmental agencies that provide programs that are directly related with health and social services. In a lot of cases, we are not even able to provide the funding and the support that we should be giving to these very basic groups. When you have day cares, when you have women's shelters, intermediate homes, help for single mothers, it is all part of trying to get our people healthy and educated and looking after themselves and being proud of who they are.

In a lot of cases, we cannot keep up with the funding or we are not putting enough priority on it to do that. I think we have to get really serious about that and do it. I know we like to keep our communities healthy and give them the ability to provide the services, but I look at my own community and we are up to three weeks waiting time now just to get an appointment if you have a health issue, if you are sick. You phone and it is at least three weeks to get in to see a doctor. Well, in three weeks, you are going to be dead or you are going to better. Why even bother? Most of the time they do not even bother going. There are definitely problems in that area. I know that recruitment is hard for doctors and nurses, whatever. It is not only hard for the department here, but is tough right across Canada right now. That is what they are saying.

However, someway, somehow we have to find some doctors and some nurses. We have the hospitals. If we do not have the doctors to put in them, we are not doing much.

Although I sympathize with the department for having a hard time finding doctors and recruitment, if it is more money, whatever it is. Baseball teams seem to have one of the best teams, if they put the right money out there. The people do come.

So I think for my community, Hay River, it is high time that we get some doctors and nurses in there and have a good complement for the hospital because if we do not pretty soon, I can see us deteriorating from where we are now, from the people that are there getting frustrated, overloaded and not being able to answer to the people's needs. I think it is going to start showing up in a negative way if we do not do something positive for our people. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.