Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'll keep my general comments fairly brief. I just wanted to again say I'm really happy that the Outreach Program is going to be really looked at, and we are going to try to get out and get into schools and the communities and try to get through to young people on what it is that the government does, how it works. I think that's really important to try to foster that type of knowledge with our youth and get them excited about the possibility of one day getting involved themselves and getting out there and doing this work. We'll hopefully see some future MLAs being talked to and getting excited about the possibility of entering into public life. I'd encourage that to move forward.

One thing I wanted to really talk about, and that's coming from being on the Board of Management, it really is, I remember back to when the Board of Management was going through a proposed reduction scenarios when the word "edict" came down from the Department of Finance and FMBS that we had to look at our expenditures and reduce as a government-wide reduction exercise. The Legislative Assembly's operations is fairly small compared to many of the other large departments, and I just don't understand or comprehend why FMBS would, in their infinite wisdom, try to enforce reduction on departments that don't really have much room to move. This is the case; and I saw it firsthand with my involvement on the Board of Management, how this is just allowed to happen. It really makes me quite ill when I see things that have just happened here recently with the $450,000 coming out of somewhere, the 525 for caribou management, and then the FMBS is nickel and diming other departments,

including the Legislative Assembly, and we've got jobs to do here. We can't forget that.

Somebody, I don't know if it's, I wouldn't say it's calculated, but I mean, somebody is trying to tell us how we're going to do our job and there's something about that, Mr. Chairman, that I just don't like. It doesn't sit well with me when things are imposed on us that try to limit our ability as Members to carry out the work here at the Legislative Assembly. I think that's partly what those reductions set us on a course to do, is limit our ability as Members to carry out our work. I take great offence to how that happened and, again, I want to state on the record that I am not supportive of across-the-top reduction exercises government-wide. It just doesn't work in all departments. The Legislative Assembly is a very perfect example of how it doesn't work.

I know the, well, I can't say where the certain individuals are right now because it's against the rules, so I won't, but maybe they can read Hansard and pick up on my comments, as well, because I think they're warranted and I think somebody has to be paying attention to that because they haven't been paying attention. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.