Thank you, Madam Chair. I'd like to start by congratulating the Minister for a fine budget address yesterday and the presentation of the budget that was conducted yesterday. I know both the Finance Minister and the Premier and the rest of Cabinet have worked very hard over the course of the last year to try to make do with what we have and also to secure some additional funding from the federal government. I applaud their efforts in that and look forward to perhaps working with them going forward to secure more of that funding, especially in terms of the resource revenue sharing, which, as everybody knows, is crucial to the future development of our territory.

I'm going to make a reply to the budget address, but just to highlight a few things for the Finance Minister and provide a few comments. I spoke yesterday and going through the budget exercise, the business plans, the draft mains, one of the recurring themes for me was the growth of the public service. I tried to bring that out again yesterday with my statement. I didn't mean any offence to the union or the public service. What I'm suggesting is that we've allowed this to reach a level where I don't believe it's sustainable over the long run. It's approximately 40 percent of our annual expense, and I don't believe it is sustainable to have that increase every year. We're going to sign a new agreement with the unions here shortly and who knows what that percentage is going to be, but where this money comes from causes me a great deal of concern. Are we going to, just because we have a surplus, eat that surplus up in any kind of new contract? There are going to be other contracts that come and obviously the compounding factor has to be taken into account. I think the Finance Minister has gotten that message through our deliberations thus far and he'll further perhaps get that message, from me anyway, and perhaps from other Members on this side of the House, over the coming few weeks as we go through the budget.

I had mentioned, as well, the fact that the secondary industry, the diamond industry, was left out of the budget address. I know it's included in the manufacturing shipments numbers, but there's no specific reference to the secondary industry in this budget. I think that's an oversight that is ill timed, given the fact of the problems we're facing with the Sirius factory.

I'd also like to mention the fact that the government always speaks of the support that it provides to the tourism industry and it just seems to me that it's just lip service. It doesn't actually come forward and it hasn't come forward recently with any new additional monies for tourism. I think that's an oversight in this budget. Of course, as we go through the various departments I'll draw attention to that as well, but I think it's something that again we have to put our money where our mouth is and if we want to promote ourselves as a world-class destination, we're going to have to spend some money, Madam Chair. That's one thing.

The fact that the Minister mentioned yesterday that economic growth shouldn't only benefit large corporations, but it also has to benefit the young men and women and the residents that live here, I think that is a crucial statement and I look forward to holding the Minister and the government to that. I think that's a key component of it.

As well, I know we went through an exercise last year of having to take a look at our tax initiative. We raised the payroll tax last year from one percent to two percent. That's something I didn't feel that strongly about and I'm hoping the government might try to revisit that decision and, given the fact that our numbers are a lot better this year, consider maybe removing or rolling back that one percent. People are just going to start paying that and it's going to not cost everybody, but it is going to cost residents here more. For some of them who are definitely in the higher tax brackets, it's going to cost them more to live here.

Also in the budget -- again getting back to the Collective Agreement that's coming forward -- nobody knows what the numbers are going to look like, but there's no mention of that in the budget, where the costs associated with any new agreement are going to come from. I think that's something that at least could have been...Negotiations are tough, so it would be tough to ballpark something like that, but we should have some kind of idea what we are willing to go forward with.

As well, there is a statement the Minister made yesterday something to the effect of remaining aggressive, looking for efficiencies and better ways of doing business. I know there have been some examples over the course of the past year where I think we have had an opportunity to try to streamline, to try to be more efficient, and we just haven't done that for whatever reason. That's something I would like to work with the Minister and with the government on going into the future to try to get some more streamlining, more efficiencies.

Our graduation rates are one of the lowest in the country at 43 percent. You get phone calls from constituents that their sons are going to kill themselves, they've got guns and there are crack dealers showing up at their house. You know, crack is a really big issue and so are other addictions here in the Territories. I don't think this investment of $200 million has addressed that. Maybe it's not just the money, Madam Chair. Maybe we have to re-examine where this investment goes and what it is earmarked for. In my opinion, it hasn't addressed the social ills this territory is faced with. There really isn't any evidence of that investment paying off to date. I would like to make that clear.

The one other thing before I wrap this up, and it has to do with resource revenue sharing and the negotiations that are ongoing for devolution and the fact, again, that the government on a yearly basis is forging ahead just spending money on negotiations. This year it's $1.8 million for the continuation of devolution and resource revenue sharing negotiations. Yes, they're very important and the money spent is probably money well spent, and I would suggest that we might even need to spend more, but there's something fundamentally wrong with the Government of the Northwest Territories having to spend its own money and resources, the finite resources that we have, to try and get something that is rightfully ours, Madam Chair. I'm not sure how the Premier or the Finance Minister can address this with Ottawa, but to me it's wrong that we have to go and spend our own money, what little money we have, trying to chase down the dollars that are rightfully ours. Something about that doesn't quite add up for me, Madam Chair.

As well, during the next couple of weeks, perhaps when MACA is here, I want to talk a little bit about the breakdown of the infrastructure money to the communities; the 55/45 split. The fact is that 75 percent of our population, Madam Chair, live in tax-based municipalities. The money can be better leveraged if it is in the tax-based municipalities. I'm not quite good with that split and I don't know why it happened that way, but we'll try to get to the bottom of that as well.

Also, in terms of apprenticeship and trades, I know the government blows its horn on the number of apprentices it has and we had the apprenticeship awards ceremony here in the House a few days ago, but I don't think we're putting enough money into it. If our apprenticeship has grown 20 percent in the last two years, where's the evidence that we've got the support on the other side of it to look after the apprentices? To my knowledge, we still only have one apprenticeship officer here in Yellowknife and that's something I think that...and, you know, it all comes back to priorities, Madam Chair, and that's what we have to work towards.

I know my time is running out, but certainly I'll have my comments ready for a reply to the budget address when the time comes. Again, I do appreciate the hard work and commitment that the Premier and the Finance Minister and the rest of Cabinet have shown over the last year, and I look forward to working with them to find some priorities and objectives for the coming year. Thank you.