But the sad fact remains that they don't have their one-third contribution even today. In fact, there's some old contribution money that they don't want to give up, and they are still trying to match dollar for dollar from old water and sewer funding that they currently have. They are just trying to match that and now we're asking them to match another one-third. So we're going to have to take a good hard look at that infrastructure, as well.

In terms of capacity building, several Members brought it up and in terms of pipeline capacity issues and that still has significant concern for me. The latest statistics that we have out there is that 53 percent of our aboriginal workforce is employed, 83 percent of the non-aboriginals are employed as well. So the non-aboriginals basically have full employment, and in our communities only half of the aboriginal people are working. It's no wonder that communities in my riding particularly are not giving overwhelming support to industry, because they don't stand a chance of getting any of the good jobs. So if they are not going to benefit, it's like I've always been saying, why support it if I'm not going to get anything? I'm not going to bother supporting this, and that's what's going on out there.

So in order to give them a unique opportunity, one of the things to do, of course, is to raise their skill level, their marketable skills, and that's why giving them a chance when they're young in school or even, indeed, the young adults that are out there. Recently I was made aware of an education program where the success down south...It's based out of Calgary, they're running it in the small reserves around Rocky Mountain House. There are about 10 communities that they're using this program on and it raised their course completion rate from 30 percent right up to 80 percent, and their graduation rate has increased, as well, to about 80 percent. Even nationally that is unheard of; an 80 percent graduation rate. But if you really think about it, once you are completing your courses, then you have a good chance of graduating.

So those are some of the things that are on my plate for this year is to say alright, can we take that course, can we bring it up North, can we have a look at it, can we even pilot it out there? I know how hard it is to chance our Education, Culture and Employment bureaucrats' thinking on how to best educate our children and I think if anybody knows best, it's ourselves who have been through the system and live in the communities. So we're going to have to really look at that. That's important to the people back home and it's something new and I'd like to try it and I would like government support in giving us an opportunity to try that, even if the people don't like it and it fails. But I think the basic thing here is that we saw something, we tried it and we don't know if it works or not, but I think our people and our children and our youth deserve an opportunity to at least try it to see if it fits our unique way of doing things.

In terms of the pipeline, I made an extra special pot of coffee this morning to listen to the pipeline recordings, especially with Judge Berger being there, and I was quite curious. I believe overall -- I was kind of trying to keep score -- people are in support of it, but they don't like the way it is happening and there are great concerns. That's the same way I am. I said cool, I stand with these people. I'm concerned about how it's being implemented. If the people and the communities are going to gain or lose really concerns me, because we know what happened the last time and I will keep saying it, is that we lost. This time around is no different. There are court cases and all that happening. Some are beyond our control, but at the same time, as a Legislature and as a government, we still have a unique opportunity to have input with this socioeconomic agreement. We learn every time. The first time, our socioeconomic agreement with that first pipeline was a dismal failure. It didn't even last a year. We gave it a bit more teeth with the diamonds; maybe not as much as people like, but there were some teeth there. We can take it one step further for this new mega project. It's $8 billion and I believe our government can make a difference for our communities and say look, if you're going to work around here, you're going to have to leave something behind and help our communities. At the same time, the claimant groups have to do their share too. They have to do their due diligence and take care of their people, but I believe that we don't have to be rubber stampers either. Yes, we're in favour of it. It will be a boom to our revenues if and when we get to that point, Madam Chair, but at the same time we still have to make sure that our people in the communities are taken care of, because these are multi-national corporations. They are not going to give us anything. It's their job to rape and pillage, Madam Chair. So we have to do what we can in order to protect our people and that's part of our mandate, each and every one of us as MLAs.

With that, Madam Chair, I would just like to conclude that in terms of the budget I really like the way it was responsive to some of the community needs. It didn't address all the needs, but I believe we're getting there. With that, I remain. Mahsi cho.