Thank you, Madam Chair. I would like to respond to some of the comments that have been made. First of all, I would like to say that I really appreciate the advice and the recommendations, the criticisms and so on, that Members raise in this forum. I know a lot of what we have, for example, in a sessional statement may seem like a report card or may seem like old news. We have to keep in mind, at least from my perspective, that we know because we sit in committees and we talk about many of these things, but often the public is not included and may not be familiar. So when we put together a sessional statement, I try to do it in a way that is aimed at the public, so they will also hear the report card we are putting forward. I must say that in my experience people do appreciate that. In my constituency meetings, they often raise questions about some of these statements that we make. So I hope you will bear with me if it seems to be a bit old news, because I do that intentionally because it's important to the public to hear what we are doing.
We are in a year in our final quarter before we do the budget and I have always viewed the budget session as the time we would introduce a lot of new initiatives, and this would be the period where we would be reporting on what we have been doing with the appropriations that were voted the previous spring. With advice, I am certainly ready to look at how we can do it differently.
When we put together our strategy as a result of consultations, we did really zero in on very practical kinds of goals. We said good fiscal management was our first strategy, the second one was healthy, well-educated people in our communities, and the third was on well-governed communities. Those are the three strategies that our government has focussed on, because I do certainly agree with Mr. Yakeleya's statement that we need to make a difference to the people out in the communities and the people who have pretty basic needs. I hear you loud and clear on the housing issue, that that is something we have to pay attention to.
While we do rely, to a large extent, on the federal government for our finances and for assistance on housing, I hope that as a government we can do more with our own resources. A practical example to me is in travelling around the communities I have seen a lot of facilities that are underutilized, and yet we have a housing shortage. What is stopping us? We can always find reasons why we shouldn't make those available for people to live in, but if they are not being utilized well for the purpose they are presently assigned, then let's use them for housing if they are appropriate at all. Some of them may not be appropriate, but there are things we can do ourselves here. I appreciate any advice that you have on how we may be able to do things like that that are more creative.
I can think of the seniors' facility in Tuk as a good example. When I was there, there was something like nine units sitting empty for years, yet we have a housing problem in Tuk. Let's be creative.
I have been watching a house in Yellowknife that is managed by one of our boards that has been empty since early last spring. A family moved out of it because they took a job somewhere else and it's owned by one of the boards. It's been sitting empty. I have no idea why. It's a house in a nice part of the city, but for some reason it just sits empty. I think there is more we can do ourselves, too. We should look at our own programs and see how we can make better use of the facilities that we have.
On the idea of research and becoming more innovative, I am 100 percent in support of us being able to do that. Last night I had a constituency meeting and one of the constituents who came to the meeting was a medical doctor who came to say he has never seen it better. We had almost a full number of doctors and nurses it the city and it's the first time he's seen it. Things are going really well. He was particularly interested in some of the funding we got from the federal government and saying is there a way for us to take some of the money that is made available for aboriginal health and some possibly that's made available to us and establish a centre of excellence in the Northwest Territories where we would have more northern home-grown research on issues that affect our people. I think it's a great idea and I offered to work with him and bring it up to the Minister of Health and I have done that already. I look forward to doing that kind of thing. I think there is some room with the money the federal government is putting forward and the attention they are paying to aboriginal issues. Whether it's diabetes, addictions, child care, there are a whole bunch of areas we could be doing northern research on. There is no end to those areas that we could be doing more research on. There is aboriginal traditional healing. We have done very little yet, but there is a lot of belief and reliance on aboriginal healing and medicines in the North. There are lots of areas. I want to challenge ourselves to do more there.
There are other areas, also. The Minister of Education just reminded me that 2006-07 is International Polar Year and he's had some discussions with Dr. Fraser, the president of the University of Alberta, about how we can work more closely with the University of Alberta. I have met with Dr. Fraser myself over the last few years and he is very keen on how we can bring university services more to the North, that they are not just places where students go to attend university, but they could also do research in the North. So while we need to deal with the practical issues, there are also opportunities for us to be doing more on leading-edge research.
There is also work being done by the deputy ministers of the three territories about a university of the North. Those are things I hope we can report back to you on and say we have made progress on them.
We do seem to have a lot of forums for consultation, I agree with Mr. Braden. At some point, we may have to collapse some of them or work them together, but I think they have been excellent vehicles to help us get a message to Ottawa and nationally. I don't begrudge at all the time I spend in meetings or the time I spend trying to build that consensus. As Mr. Braden said, we can probably set a good example for the federal government
on how you have to work together in a consensus government and that it can be made to work, because I think we are showing a lot of good success.
I'm very satisfied with the Prime Minister's interest on the North, and the Northwest Territories in particular. I am very appreciative of his receptiveness to issues that we put forward. I am particularly interested in his offer to work with us and with aboriginal organizations, aboriginal governments, to develop a vision for the North, a broad strategy of where we are going. I think that can help to answer the question that Mr. Yakeleya raised of what is the vision, where are we going to be 10, 20, 50 years from now. Where are we heading as a territory? Those can be good discussions and we have made an offer to the Prime Minister and we are ready to participate, to have people sit down with his representatives and begin that exercise of building that vision.
There are some practical things that we have to do, and I appreciate Mr. Pokiak's comments. Resource revenue sharing, I agree, is the most important thing that we have to achieve. We cannot have big, mega projects continue to take resources out of here without a reasonable amount being available for us today, but also being available for future generations. I would like to have some discussion sometime on, for example, a heritage fund. We should be putting money away. We know that non-renewable resources will run out some day and we need to begin now to plan for the future on that. So I'm intrigued by those kinds of projects.
Sometimes we are limited today, but hopefully it will improve. A good example is on the highway money. There is $158 million being spent. As Mr. Pokiak said, it is largely on existing highway systems, but again it's federal money, it's meant to respond to economic activity. I hope to take those kinds of things and build them out into projects that can result in a good highway from Inuvik to Tuk as development happens. A lot of what we want to do is dependent on the pipeline, it's dependent on some more resource development happening; mining, as well. But I think there are lots of opportunities.
I will just close by saying I do appreciate Members' comments on the sessional statement, rather than just giving it and then folding it up and never seeing it again. So I do appreciate the discussion this afternoon. Thank you.