Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, one of the concerns that comes from a lot of our small communities is the lack of infrastructure in our communities or the lack of capacity to be able to do the things you have to do to run a municipality. An example is the garage space in communities for the storage of equipment or vehicles, or even to have infrastructure in place that meets the needs of the community.

One of the items of community infrastructure that has been talked about and raised in Caucus and meetings we have held was the whole area of trying to look at a project to deal with the air quality question in communities, to deal with dust and mud.

The road systems we have in our communities, in most cases, people say that if you can come up with a sidewalk project, you will probably be elected for life, because in most communities in this day and age, you walk down the middle of the road because there is no other place to walk. There is no need for that. This government has denied communities the opportunity to develop over a period of time.

You talk about cutbacks, you talk about priorities put in place by government and you are saying FMBS this and FMBS that, but I think that is what it is, it is BS.

I think it is important that we as a government have to start allowing those decisions to be made by the people that have to live with those decisions. Sooner or later, as a government we will have to set those examples. When we have health issues, you talk about infrastructure in our communities. We cannot continue to play this game of pick and choose unless you have an inventory or means of checking from one location to another to see exactly where it is going. You cannot really tell me that one issue is different from one community to another. Most communities have the same problems and concerns.

I touched on one, the community infrastructure when it comes to garage and road maintenance, but when you look at the budgets for communities, you might get $30,000 for residential development. That is nothing.

I think if we want to do anything with infrastructure in our communities, it should be based on a formula that is acceptable to communities, instead of being told from Yellowknife and people in the higher-ups that the criteria is based on numbers, on population and on a formula that we determined and you do not fall into that formula. There has to be a system in place. Those formulas that we have are outdated. They are obsolete. We have to start putting more resources into communities to develop the minimum of infrastructure.

When you start talking about dust control and improving our road and infrastructure in our communities, this government has to put those resources into those types of projects so that it benefits all communities. You do not just play one community off against the others.

I would like to ask the Minister, where is he with regard to this issue about improving roads in communities to deal with the dust and mud, to allow for communities to improve the quality of life, for the benefit of people in those small communities?