Thank you, Madam Chair. In looking at these two departments, Madam Chair, I am not part of the economic standing committee; so much of what I am doing is from a sort of a more general level. I am not into the detail. One of the things that I wanted to touch on here was the reason that these two portfolios were brought together and now the reason that we are taking them apart...the conservation protection mandate as opposed to the development exploitation mandate. I am very supportive of the separation even to the point of view where, if I am going to be contradicting a couple of my colleagues where it may certainly be regrettable or unfortunate that we actually have to spend some more money to do this. Madam Chair, one of the things we should accept is that this is an extremely complex economy. It is one of the fastest growing and most diverse in Canada. I do not regret or I really have no objection to, in reasonable measure, spending some more money to make sure that, administratively, the jobs are handled properly. If we could have avoided it, it would have been great, but I don't object to the increment that we are showing here.
But more to the point, Madam Chair, I guess, in terms of looking at the vision and the mission and the goal statements, these are things that are important to me because they help set out the philosophy and drive and the purpose and the delivery of what these new agencies are going to do for us. I must say that the vision of this new department, as set out in the book here, is quite a conservative piece of work, Madam Chair. Perhaps I had an assumption or an expectation that this Department of Industry, Tourism and Investment would sort of be the cheerleader for the Northwest Territories; the rah, rah we want to get out there and get the dollars working. We want to make sure they go in the right place. We are going to be the leaders and the pacesetters of economic development and diversification in the NWT. But if we read the vision statement, as is put down on the main estimates here, our sustainable and diverse economy will be built on the strengths of self-reliance and the wise use of natural resources, and incorporates traditional lifestyles with a modern economy for a long-term viability and benefit of our children and our future. It is the most politically correct mission statement. It has a lot of buzz words. It has all the politically correct stuff all jammed into one. It really waters down, for me, what could have been or could be a really crisp, clean message about the importance we put on attracting and building good investment here. As I say, this is an awfully conservative statement of what this department believes it should be doing.
Maybe I will just leave it there and see if the Minister has any response to that. In this particular area, I wanted to reflect, Madam Chair, that, for me, this department is coming up a bit short -- quite short, in fact -- on the tone and the type of message that I believe it could be coming out with. Thank you.