Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, one thing that we see is a lot of people conducting meetings. We do a lot of travelling and attend a lot of workshops, conferences and committee meetings. Expenditures at a lot of these major events usually take place in our large centres like Inuvik, Yellowknife and Fort Smith.

However, Mr. Speaker, I think it is important that we direct our departments and agencies such as the NWT Development Corporation, the Business Credit Corporation, the Power Corporation and also the departments that host workshops, strategies and get-togethers, that those forms of get-togethers could be hosted in small communities.

I think it is time that we started promoting our small communities to these agencies and departments which represent all communities. I think it is important that we find a mechanism that allows people from the communities to also see the different structures of our government that represent them by making decisions, either through developing policies, procedures or looking at strategies.

We find that in a lot of our small communities, it seems like government comes around maybe once a year, if you are lucky. In most cases, a lot of our communities now have developed hotels and accommodations through bed and breakfast facilities. I think we have to look at that opportunity so that all communities in the Northwest Territories benefit, but also so we promote those communities to agencies of government and the expenditures made by government are shared, not only spent in the larger centres, but spent in our smaller communities.

I think it is important, Mr. Speaker, that we take the time to look at the public awareness of what we do as government and also get the people who represent communities on these agencies and public bodies to really get a feel for what is in our communities, to see exactly what is so unique about our communities, what makes our communities work and exactly who the people are in our communities.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to direct this government to take it upon themselves to establish a policy or a directive to those departments out there to do everything they can to ensure that small communities have this opportunity to host these different functions.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I will be asking the Minister questions on this matter. Thank you.

-- Applause