But he's getting the big bucks, so maybe he could explain something.

Thank you, Ms. Lee. Mr. Roland.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, in the immediate term, we are dealing with the issues of subsidies, even though we recognize in the long term, they are not going to be the fix-all for the situation. As a government, if we don't change the way we do business in the long term, trying to carry on with the subsidy process that's existing will drive us into bankruptcy. So we are going to have to look at the investments we make, long term, around hydro, how we produce our electricity. For example, Mr. Speaker, one of the things we are doing, and continue to do, is in the Territorial Power Support Program that works with those residents who pay a higher power rate than within the capital. So that's one of the areas. Income support or housing programs, those are short-term solutions that we will have to continue to deal with and continue to pay the forced growth cost. It's things like hydro and transportation systems, and we have to work with the federal government in those areas to get some support. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Roland. Supplementary, Ms. Lee.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I think in the long run, the things that will bring down the cost of living are a healthier economy, free competition, more supply to meet the demands of goods. As long as there is one store that brings goods from thousands of miles away and they charge whatever they want, things are not going to go down. We need to create sustainable economies, and I am not hearing how...and housing issues. Lack of development and ability of this government or anybody to bring the cost of housing down, and I am not hearing any talks from the Premier or the Minister or anybody with aboriginal governments and leadership in the North about how we do bread and butter issues rather than spending all our time talking about big ticket items, which is important but can't be done in isolation and separation from the rest of the bread and butter issues. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Ms. Lee. Mr. Roland.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, even I would like to have a Tim Horton's in Inuvik, or a Wal-Mart many people would like to have, but a lot of those organizations, even within their setup of businesses,

require a certain population to make that business work. That's one of the problems we face. Small, isolated, remote communities are high cost centres. That's one of the things we have to deal with. That's why we see so many subsidies in place. So the fact of trying to create that economic condition to develop is one thing we wrestle with as a government. How much of our programs do we spin off and try to create an economic situation? In some cases the Member has touched on, it is a false economy to a certain degree because we are driving that economy through much of our expenditures. We are going to have to look at that. We are going to work on it within a number of departments to try to make something come around and hopefully create a small business environment that just helps them to prosper. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Roland. Time for question period has expired, but I will allow the Member one short, final supplementary question. Ms. Lee.

Thank you. I will try for a specific question here. Yesterday I learned that MACA has basically given up trying to come up with lots to reduce the cost of housing, for example. Could I ask the Minister of Finance, as Minister of Finance, to talk to the Cabinet about how we deal with the cost of lot development so we can deal with the cost of housing, which I think is the biggest driver of the cost of living. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Ms. Lee. Mr. Roland.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Since the Member has raised the issue of housing and the impact in the Northwest Territories, talking about being visionary, we are trying to work on a package that might actually put more housing in the communities, drop the cost of living in that area, and that's the Novel concept.

---Applause

Put subdivisions in those communities and put homes on the ground for families. That's one of the areas. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Roland. Question period has expired. Written questions. Returns to written questions. Replies to opening address. Replies to budget address. The honourable Member for Hay River South, Mrs. Groenewegen.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I have never done a reply to the budget address before, but I think, according to the rules, I can talk about anything that touches on the budget for as long as I want.

So I hope my honourable colleagues won't all get up and run out of the House.

(Microphone turned off)...replies to the budget address is 20 minutes and it has to be on the budget. Mrs. Groenewegen.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I will definitely respect that and keep it to 20 minutes.

Mr. Speaker, I am going to raise the subject of the Legislative Assembly. I am not going to stick to exactly how it relates to the budget, but it is a budget item, and it is a department item, and it is an expenditure of this government to fund this Legislative Assembly. So today I want to talk about that.

Just recently, we've had a review of the compensation that MLAs are paid to do our jobs, and that certainly is a component of that Legislative Assembly budget, and all the indemnities and the supports that we get to fulfil our jobs as MLAs. Mr. Speaker, I have concerns about some of the changes I have observed. I have been here 10 years and, lately, I have begun to notice that there is a bit of an erosion, it would appear, in terms of people's commitment to this process. I am a big supporter of this process here that happens on the floor of this House for the public to view and for us to debate and raise issues on behalf of our constituents. I think it's very important to public government that this process take place. So, first of all, let me say I am a big supporter of it.

However, I am disturbed by what I see as an erosion of people's understanding of the significance of this. Now things have changed recently, and not to be critical, but when I used to stand up in this House, even if nobody was listening to me, at least I knew my constituents at home were listening to me because for that two hours, we knew that we were going to be televised on APTN and people in our communities and every community I have ever travelled to talked about watching us on television. Maybe they are just looking at what we are wearing that day or our little idiosyncrasies when we stand up here in the House. They comment on everything. But at least they were following what we were doing.

So that gave some level of expectation on people's part, on us, that we were going to stand up and say something intelligent and say something representative of their issues, and people wanted to hear that and they liked that. I know that the powers that be are working on trying to replace that with something equal, if not better, to allow people to engage in what we do here in this House.

I notice there are a lot of things going on in the North right now that might be a lot more exciting than what's going on here. You listen to the news this morning and the highlights on the news were Imperial Oil's meeting with the folks in Fort Good Hope and Colville over their access and benefits agreement. There was a big news item and interview this morning on the Dehcho land use planning process meeting that was going on in Hay River. The emerging aboriginal governments and their issues related to politics and economy are starting to take a much higher profile in the Northwest Territories and people are following that to some large extent, which also goes to whether or not people are watching or care what we are doing.

There are also a lot of things going on in the economy that has captured people's attention. People say that when the economy is bad, everybody pays attention to the politicians and what the government is doing. When the economy is good, nobody really cares. We just aren't the big show in

town that we used to be because of the resource development and the private sector is doing so well.

So I don't know what people are saying about us right now. I am not really sure what we are saying. I am not sure what we will be remembered for. MLA McLeod talked about legacy, what will the 15th Assembly be remembered for. I am not sure yet. We are more than halfway through our term and I still don't really know what we will have accomplished in the bigger scheme of things by the time we get to the end of this term. I don't know if we have too many priorities and maybe so many priorities that nothing is a priority. The thing we need to ask ourselves is are we going to be remembered as a status quo maintenance government and we were just an extension of the bureaucratic function of managing programs and services and departments? That's a possibility, too.

So I don't know how many people are paying attention to what we are doing, but one thing I do know is, we do spend a lot of money to ensure that this process takes place with a certain amount of decorum and a certain amount of dignity on the floor of this House. We have rules and this is something we fought very long and hard for to wrestle away from Ottawa. We did not want authority and administration being carried out in Ottawa, so we wrestled for years to evolve to this point where we would have the privilege of doing what we do everyday that the House is sitting here in Yellowknife.

We do spend this money partly to encourage feedback and participation in the democratic process. We want to hear people's input. They hear what we are saying and they might have a comment on what we are saying, so that is a part of the purpose of this Assembly.

So the Assembly and the public debate that ensues in this House, we hope to our constituents, demonstrates that there is accountability. I think that's also a big part of what we do.

People think that this is an entrenched institution now, the Legislative Assembly and what happens here, and that we have this and it's not going away. I hate to say this, but from what I have observed over the last couple of weeks here, I would say it's a very slippery slope when people start to not take this as seriously as they should. I am not criticizing anybody and I say this to myself as well, but I really do think that we need to respect each other and we need to respect the work that needs to be done here. I think it needs to be paramount. We do get paid a lot of money to come here and do this job. A lot of it is constituency work and, yes, we are on call 24 hours a day. People say did you have a break, were you on holidays? No, we weren't; we were in our communities. We are there for everything. We are there when somebody is sick. We are there when there are issues that arise in the communities. People look to us. We have to be there to respond to that role.

When division took place, we discussed how many Members we needed in this forum in order to make it work, and the number 15 was suggested. I was never in support of 15. I think that we can barely make this thing effectively with 19, and there is an Electoral Boundaries Commission right now and if they came back and said we needed more MLAs, I don't think I would necessarily disagree with them. There is a lot of work to be done. There is a lot of committee work, but we also need the critical mass of people because we feed off of each other. We also inspire each other to do our jobs. We may not want to admit that, but I'm sorry, I believe the way we do our jobs inspires each other and when somebody, for whatever reason, drops out of the mix or is not there or visible, it changes the dynamics. One region not represented and one person not represented changes the perspective of how we do our work. That's how important each one of us are to this process.

Yesterday, we struggled along. For various reasons, our numbers were down and it was difficult. It put a lot more strain on everybody and it was much more subdued. It wasn't lively. It wasn't exciting. I kind of missed that. I am not following my notes here at all.

I guess, in summary, Mr. Speaker, I think we just need to kick things up a notch around here, if I can use that term. I could do more and I am going to try to do more to realize that. As I said, I don't want to criticize anybody, but people want to hear good debate. People like it. They want to hear the issues aired, whether you are on one side of the issue or the other. They want to hear the issues debated.

Even a little bit of controversy can get people engaged in what we are doing. It makes us a little bit more passionate about it, and then they become more passionate about it. I hope we haven't distanced ourselves or become disinterested in the many needs in the North. We should be able to get very passionate about the needs in the North. Sometimes when things are going well and employment is doing a little better, out of sight, out of mind. It is possible for us to become distant from the needs in the North. We need to be reminded of those needs all the time. There is a lot of work to do in order to respond to the needs of people in the North. If we have become removed from those things, we need to find ways to remind ourselves and get very up close and familiar with those needs.

We don't need people just here warming their chairs, as I said. I don't know. Actually, we do need people here to warm the chairs. Today, we had the Ecole Boreale students here watching us. If their teacher, Miss Sophie Call, if we had been in her class, I am sure there were a few of us she would have told to sit down and be quiet if that is her classroom. When she saw the empty chairs, she might have wondered if some epidemic illness had swept her class.

Maybe, as I said, people think that our privilege here is well entrenched. Like I said, I think that it would not take much for the proceedings of this House to come to a grinding halt. We watched in Nunavut. One day, they rang the bells and the quorum didn't show up. You might think, oh, that would never happen here. I think it could happen here. I think that the day that happens here, it would be a very sad day in the Government of the Northwest Territories.

Mr. Speaker, I just think we need to put a little bit more life, passion and excitement into what we are doing all, of course, within the confines of decorum and respect in the House. This is just something that I wanted to speak of. I will bring it back to the budget again. We spend a lot of money on this process, and I think that we should do it honour by making sure we are here and doing our best. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

---Applause

Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. Replies to the budget address. Petitions. Reports of committees

on the review of bills. Tabling of documents. The honourable Minister of Finance, Mr. Roland.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I wish to table the following document entitled, The Government of the Northwest Territories' Responses to the Report on Pre-Budget Consultations. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Roland. Tabling of documents. Notices of motion. The honourable Member for Great Slave, Mr. Braden.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I give notice that, on Monday, February 13, 2006, I will move the following motion: Now therefore I move, seconded by the honourable Member for Tu Nedhe, that this Legislative Assembly supports an increase of the northern residency deduction; and further, that this Legislative Assembly supports ongoing annual indexing of the northern residency deduction to keep pace with the cost of living; and further, Mr. Speaker, that the Premier and Minister of Finance will immediately begin work with their counterparts in the other territories and affected provinces, as well as northern Members of Parliament, to collectively make the case to the federal government to increase the northern residency deduction.

Mr. Speaker, at the appropriate time, I will seek unanimous consent to deal with this motion today. Thank you.

---Applause

Thank you, Mr. Braden. Notices of motion. Notices of motion for the first reading of bills. Motions. The honourable Member for Great Slave, Mr. Braden.

Mr. Speaker, thank you. I seek unanimous consent to deal with the motion I gave notice of earlier today.

Thank you, Mr. Braden. The Member is seeking unanimous consent to deal with the motion he gave notice of earlier today. Are there any nays? There are no nays. You may continue with your motion, Mr. Braden.