Thank you, Mr. Minister. Supplementary, Mr. Krutko.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I believe there are 23 capital projects within this contract. Out of the 23 projects, two have been deferred which are over the $100,000 or 20 percent of those projects. I would like to ask the Minister again, do you agree that a project, a whole bunch of projects, make up a capital project in regard to the expenditure of the $5 million? There are 23 projects.

Thank you, Mr. Krutko. The honourable Minister responsible for the Department of Finance, Mr. Handley.

Mr. Speaker, it may seem like we are splitting hairs here in definitions, but the project is the overall project, as I said, the way it is laid out in the main estimates. The project is $5 million. The 23, as Mr. Krutko calls them projects, are really contracts within that project. When I read the Financial Administration Act and the Financial Administration Manual, it does not make reference to contracts within the project. It just talks about the project. I have to take the definition that is conventional here and that is what is laid out in the main estimates. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Supplementary, Mr. Krutko.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. That is exactly the problem we have. The whole interpretation of projects which are moved from one Member's riding, which affects my ability to ensure employment and opportunities in my riding, has been jeopardized by the department moving two projects out of my riding into someone else's.

This precedent has been set in the 13th Assembly and we are dealing with it here again. I would like to ask the Minister, as the Minister responsible for ensuring that the Financial Administration Act is adhered to, why is it that you are not following it?

Thank you, Mr. Krutko. The honourable Minister responsible for the Department of Finance, Mr. Handley.

Mr. Speaker, I did not quite catch the last word, but I think the question is why am I not following it. We are following both the Financial Administration Act and the Financial Administration Manual because we are using the conventional definition of project.

What happens within it, it can be any number of little contracts. That is what is moved around in this case, but those are not projects. I cannot say any more, other than we are following it. There has not been anything wrong in terms of the Financial Administration Act or manual.

I think, as I mentioned earlier, Mr. Steen, the Minister of Transportation, may not have been aware of where the constituency boundaries were and there was money moved from this contract to that contract and that is what seems to have created the confusion, but that is not a violation of the Financial Administration Act. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Handley. Supplementary, Mr. Krutko.

Mr. Speaker, it is clear, in regard to the consultation guidelines for capital projects and budget adjustments, there has been an adjustment to this capital project, where two projects within a capital project have been deferred or cancelled for a year.

So there has been a change to the existing capital project as it existed in the passing of the main estimates, which we approved for $8 million, where there were actually tenders put out for this specific work. As a government, we spent money to buy the culverts, which are in place already.

I would like to ask the Minister, in regard to the consultation guidelines, there has been a change to the capital project, which has now been adjusted. Do you agree with that?

Thank you, Mr. Krutko. The honourable Minister responsible for the Department of Finance, Mr. Handley.

Mr. Speaker, no. The information I have is that the project was budgeted at $5 million. It is still $5 million. Money may have moved from one contract to another, but the project is still the same size. It is the contracts that have moved around.

Mr. Speaker, I will speak with the Minister of Transportation and try to understand it a little better. If there is something there, then I would certainly get back to the Member. However, the information I have is that the project is still $5 million, which is the amount that it always was. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Handley. That was indeed the final answer, because time for question period has ended. Item 7, written questions. The Chair recognizes the honourable Member for Yellowknife Centre, Mr. Ootes.

I seek unanimous consent to return to item 5, recognition of visitors in the gallery, before we proceed on to new items. Thank you.

Thank you. The honourable Member is seeking unanimous consent to return to item 5, recognition of visitors in the gallery. Are there any nays? There are no nays. Mr. Ootes.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to recognize Dr. Judith Knapp, superintendent of the Yellowknife Education District No. 1, here in Yellowknife, and Pam Petten, the director of educational services. Thank you.

-- Applause

Thank you, Mr. Ootes. Welcome, Dr. Knapp and Mrs. Petten. Item 5, recognition of visitors in the gallery. Item 7, written questions. The honourable Member for Tu Nedhe, Mr. Nitah.

Thank you, Mr. Nitah. Item 7, written questions. Item 8, returns to written questions. Item 9, replies to the opening address. The honourable Member for Mackenzie Delta, Mr. Krutko.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, a lot has happened in the North in the last few months when you talk about pipelines, the hydro dams, and also considering the capacity we need to take all of this on. Yet, Mr. Speaker, in a lot of our communities, we are dealing with some elements many people do not like to speak about. Mr. Speaker, I am talking about suicide.

Mr. Speaker, in my riding in the last five months, there have been two cases of suicide. I feel as a government and a people, we have to do more to raise this issue, to make sure people understand that there are resources out there, there are people there to talk to. We do have to deal with the social issues in our communities -- alcoholism, drug abuse, literacy, homelessness -- and also realizing that we have a bigger social problem out there than we would really like to believe.

We do a lot in regard to making grand statements, travelling to major centres: Houston, Texas, New York, Ottawa and Calgary. As a government, we do not really put our hands on the issues that affect the people in our communities day in and day out.

Since these two suicides, there have been numerous cases of attempted suicides. I feel that as a government and a people, we have to realize the hurt, the pain and the realization that this problem is not going away soon.

For myself, coming from the community of Fort McPherson, I have been affected by some 17 to 20 suicides. I have been affected directly by some 25 alcohol-related accidents in our community. Mr. Speaker, these problems are still there.

We can talk about exporting all of the resources in the world, all of the energy in the world, to southern institutions and people in the southern part of Canada and the United States, but we cannot even pinpoint the problems that we have in our communities day in and day out. People are living, actually living, with a disability of grieving, because we go through so many deaths in our communities. It is affecting everyone from myself as an elected leader to the child in the classroom.

I believe that this government has to do more, way more, than what we are presently doing. I for one see an injustice of treatment in programs being delivered. We have one alcohol treatment centre in the Northwest Territories. We all realize the biggest economic problem we have today of assimilating the people in the North from getting employment is not having the basics. They do not have the ability to work because of alcohol problems, literacy and the social stigma that is put on these people because of their dependency on income support.

I feel that we can have all the dreams of the world reaching the moon, but unless you deal with the problems at home, we may as well forget about that spaceship, because it is not going to take off because there is not going to be enough people to get into it to launch it.

We are spending millions of dollars on studies, millions of dollars on conferences, yet we do not have the resources to open up another alcohol and drug treatment centre or have a program for people who have alcohol and drug problems to go to so that they are able to pass the drug and alcohol tests they need to get employment in the oil and gas industry.

We talk a lot about economics. In this House, I hear very little about the thing that means the most to our people, which is the land and the environment and the wildlife that sustains them for hundreds of thousands of years. I think as a government, we are losing sight of the basic reality of what people really believe in.

An elderly lady stopped me in Aklavik a couple of weeks ago and told me outright, "You better stop that pipeline because it is going to have an effect on our people worse than what we are seeing now." I believe her. We have seen the boom/bust scenarios. I was around during the 70s and the 80s in the Beaufort. The idea was it was two weeks to make it and two weeks to spend it, because we thought the road show was going to go on forever and a day, and it did not. Because of that boom, we are paying for the social problems that come with economic booms.

We have alcoholism, suicide, FAS/FAE problems in our schools. Those did not just fall into our laps. They were put there by a system that became too economically minded to grasp the human side of development. The big mighty dollar is there to grab a hold of, but not realizing there is a human implication.

There are pros and cons to everything. There are pros to development. It will bring you a lot of green money, give you a lot of jobs. The pipeline scenario is a four-to seven-year window. After the pipeline is built, the oil is flowing through the pipe, or the gas, then what?

I think we as a government are starting to really lose sight of the human side of government. Yes, we can say we can export our power to southern Canada. We will be like Quebec, dam all the rivers and send all the power to New York or wherever else, so they can light up the night sky and they can burn power like there is no end to it.

Yet in the North, we do not even have a strategy on energy, regarding what are we going to do once the oil and gas or minerals have been exploited and are all gone. What is going to be left for us to take care of our heating needs, our power needs, and our reliability to ensure there are resources for the next couple hundred years to sustain the people in the North? We are not even talking about that.

I for one feel we have to do more. I keep talking about community capacity. Community capacity to me means more than saying community empowerment, giving you a nurse, giving you a policeman, giving you a social person. There are other people who fit within that loop we are aiming in our communities, the mental health workers, the alcohol and drug specialists, the people who deal with muscle disorders, the people who deal with the whole aspect of infrastructure.

We have infrastructure in our communities that is 20, in some cases 30, years old. Yet there is nothing in the plan to realize that sooner or later, the infrastructure will need to be replaced. We keep putting these band-aid solutions to reacting with problems. The big one to me is dealing with human health.

In my riding, there has been a problem with regard to water in Fort McPherson -- THMs, which is known to cause cancer. We have another problem in Aklavik in regard to trihalomethanes, H. pylori, which has been recognized as another carcinogen that causes cancer.

Doctors have requested that this government do studies on the population of Aklavik to deal with this problem, but yet today, they cannot find resources to do those studies. Yet you can spend hundreds, if not millions of dollars, on studies in regard to Med-Emerg reports and other studies and having conferences.

I think that something has to change there. I think the communities have the resources to begin that development, but they have to have the commitment from governments to ensure that they have access to those resource people.

We talked about speech therapists in the Northwest Territories. One person to represent 33 communities. That person is going to be run off their feet. We do have problems in regard to speech.

I for one feel that we have to do more in the area of expanding the resources that we have and the resource people who are in our communities, giving them the tools to do the jobs that we expect them to do. Not give them a desk and a typewriter and say, "Okay, it is all yours." Then when they get frustrated, they phone to send people out to alcohol and drug programs, they have no money in their budget so, "Sorry. Come back next week. Maybe we will send you down to Hay River."

There is no money for alcohol and drug programs to really do justice to the problems. I think that it is important that we seriously revamp programs that are not working.

I for one feel that we have to ensure the ability of people are really adhered to and the basic fundamentals are being given to people.

Education is key to our problems. However, the biggest problem that we have in our system is literacy in our communities. I think that it is something that goes hand in hand with poverty.

Poverty in our communities is abundant from our social statistics. We have people who are dependant on a system, because they cannot do simple things, such as reading and writing. We have people who cannot get a job because they are unable to read or write.

I think we have to somehow realize that we cannot just piecemeal a project. We cannot say, "Okay, we have this money over here for education. We have money over here for health. We have a little bit of money over here for community development, through Municipal and Community Affairs." Somehow, those dollars have to work together to formulate that there is enough there to do justice to do a program.

If we are not going to fund programs properly, there is something wrong with that picture.

I for one feel that we have to involve communities in regard to the major impacts that are going to take hold. We cannot play regions off against regions. We have processes that are in place that hopefully will get people on the same playing field.

The Deh Cho have just begun a process. We have claim settlements in the northern regions, in regard to the Inuvialuit, the Gwich'in and the Sahtu. The Dogribs are well on their way.

Yet, Mr. Speaker, there is no real hands-on implementation of these agreements. We have a Wildlife Act, which is hopefully going to be coming to this House in the next short while, which will implement sections and obligations that are in land claim agreements, such as the Gwich'in, which will give the boards the responsibility and the ability to do what they were appointed to do. We will also have a public process in regard to economics and how those developments will happen.

For years, we have heard of devolution -- transferring responsibilities from Ottawa to the Northwest Territories and the aboriginal people in the North to handle oil and gas resources.

On one hand we are talking pipelines, we are talking hydro development. However, on the other hand, the jurisdiction still sits in Ottawa. I for one feel that we have to do more to change that process so that people really understand what do you mean by royalties? What do you mean by benefit agreements? What do you mean by social economic agreements? Or for that case, what do you mean by the Northwest Territories Oil and Gas Act? What does that mean? Does that mean that now all of the oil companies are going to have to come to the Northwest Territories and say "Well, here is my licence. I want to drill." What does it mean?

As a government, we can never lose sight of who we are here to serve. We are here to serve the people -- not people with big, big pots of money; pipeline companies, hydro companies, the United States government, because that is who is driving the ship. It is not us. I think it is important that we seriously look at the problems of suicide in our communities, alcohol and drugs, literacy and in dealing with the basic fundamentals of life for most people. They are still there.

I think something does not jibe in this picture. I think it is important as a government that we do take the time and initiative to really fix those problems before we start imposing new problems on problems that already exist.

I have been involved in aboriginal politics for some 15 years. I started off working in the oil patch in Norman Wells and went back to Fort McPherson and got involved in the then Mackenzie Delta Regional Council. That was in 1984. That is when the Inuvialuit were just getting their agreements in place. A lot of these problems that I saw in 1984 are still there today.

I think it is important that we as government and politicians really look at where we are going, how we are going to get there, and exactly who we are really here for. I know it is easy to say, "Well, quit drinking, quit doing drugs, and everything would be taken care of." You cannot turn a light bulb off that has been burning for 15 years, where someone has had to deal with the problem of suicide or alcohol-related problems in our communities which have compounded themselves to, in my case as I mentioned earlier, 17 people I knew personally who have committed suicide. Twenty-five people who have died of alcohol-related accidents. I think it is important that we do not shy away from suicides. We do not shy away from deaths that may not be seen in the context of natural -- they are happening.

We have to do more to improve our social envelope and social problems before we take on the bigger problems which are out of our control and are in the control and domain of the federal government or large multi-million dollar diamond or oil companies that can swallow us up, considering the budgets they play with compared to the budget we have to administer programs and services in the North.

We have to ensure involvement in all aspects, from children to our elderly, and also that there is an open process to ensure that all programs, expenditures and plans we have as a government are either accepted or reviewed, or had input, good or bad. It has to be an open process.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

-- Applause

Thank you, Mr. Krutko. Item 9, replies to opening address. Item 10, petitions. Item 11, reports of standing and special committees. Item 12, reports of committees on the review of bills. Item 13, tabling of documents. The honourable Member for Nunakput, Mr. Steen.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I wish to table the following document entitled Government of the Northwest Territories Submission to the Canada Transportation Act Review Panel, Regarding the Canada Transportation Act, March 27, 2001. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Steen. Item 13, tabling of documents. The honourable Member from the Deh Cho, Mr. McLeod.