Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There are a number of initiatives that we have undertaken in order to get more money into the pockets of northerners. Mr. Speaker, earlier on I was talking about devolution and resource revenue sharing. That is number one. That is what is going to make us self-sufficient, is if we get to keep a fair share of resource revenues for our people. Then we can do the kinds of things that Alaska is doing now in terms of dividends and rebates back to its people. That is number one in my mind.
Second is, we have been successful in negotiating some amounts of money. For example, in my sessional statement, I made reference to the $35 million that we are turning over to local leaders in the communities, or proposing to turn over to them, to be used on things of highest priority for them. They are the ones who every day see the working poor and others who have needs. They will decide on the priorities.
Third, Mr. Speaker, another one we have spoken about and included in the sessional statement is the initiatives we have on energy conservation. We are strongly in favour of conservation as a way of cutting down costs. There are some immediate things that can be done in the short term to have people achieve savings this winter, even as we enter the winter.
We will follow very closely on what the federal government is doing on their heating rebate program. In the longer term, we are strongly supportive of hydro development as a way of fixing our costs at a more reasonable level than we can have on a heating rebate program. In the longer term, we are strongly supportive of hydro development as a way of fixing our costs at a more reasonable level than we could have on other fuel.
Mr. Speaker, I could go on and on with the number of initiatives we are undertaking in order to keep the costs down for our residents. I agree with the Member that it is the working poor, those who are right on the edge, who don't have a lot of spare money, who are hurt most by these bigger, global events that tend to make our costs to go up even in the North. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.