Mr. Speaker, I've certainly had discussions with the Member of Parliament about our impending deficit. I have not spoken to her since we have tabled our budget here, but I won't get into the detail of those discussions. But she understands very well that we are being driven into a deficit. Again I won't guess at the media's accuracy in quoting her and so on. But, in my view, she's trying to put a good spin on the budget, and there are some good things in there for all Canadians. But I'll tell you, it's very difficult to get excited about some of them. If I take as one example, Mr. Speaker, housing. There's $80 million for affordable rental housing for Canada over the next two years; $40 million each year for two years. If we were take that on a per capita basis, 0.13 percent, our share of that money, Mr. Speaker, would be $52,000 per year. That doesn't even build a porch on a house, in most cases. That kind of support is really, really minimal. It doesn't help us very much. If they gave us one percent, as they did with the strategic infrastructure program, that would give us $400,000. At least we could build a house and a half in the North. But that kind of expenditure or commitment by the federal government really doesn't help us that much. As I go through the budget and try to work this out, I just can't get excited about the little bits of money that are coming our way.
I will help the Member of Parliament in every way I can to try to get away from this per capita thing and give us something that's based on our needs. Every single way I can I'll work with her to do that, because I think that's what we have to do in the North, not fight with each other about who created the deficit.
But I'll tell you, Mr. Speaker, we cannot keep ourselves out of deficit if we're going to respond to the economic opportunities we have, and we certainly can't expect 42,000 or 43,000 people in the North to pay for all of this investment we have to make. It's impossible. The federal government takes the revenue, they have to put money back in here. Thank you.
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