Thank you, Mr. Chair. I would like to respond to the Premier’s sessional statement and I would like to start by building a strong foundation and hitting some common ground.

First of all, there were main points that I strongly agree with, but the first one I would like to touch on is a sustainable future means looking far beyond a four-year horizon, and that’s repeated later in the statement. I would like to challenge all Members here, all Members of the House, do we have the far-sightedness that this requires.

The second point I would like to emphasize is working together. That’s something all the elders I have worked with over the years have emphasized. I am slowly becoming one myself and so I find myself emphasizing that really critical element. We do need to work together. I think there’s a proven track record of great accomplishment when we do.

As a third point -- I am skipping to page 4 of the address -- to me, a very key question is where can we have the greatest impact, not just after the next four years, but over the longer term of our future. To me, it’s partly how. The actions that support all our goals, especially at reduced cost, are the ones we want to be investing in. My theme this morning is supporting local business. Using local business or supporting local business that uses local resources will give us big, big returns for our local economies and our territorial economy.

Education really from the bottom up, early childhood education, childcare and housing, these sorts of things are always place-based. In other words, in a way that engages us in our communities and imbeds us in the land we live on.

Also another how there is shifting subsidies from some of the things that are clearly bad for our economy and bad from the environment to those things that are good. I have lots of suggestions I would be happy to chat with you about at some point.

Again, a very important statement, we need to improve the effectiveness by recognizing connections; connections between individual decisions and programs, health and education, economic development and environmental impacts and really between all of those. That’s something that I have seen missing. This is a core that has driven me into politics. It is trying to make and emphasize those connections. More on that later.

Again, development must continue to be undertaken in an environmentally sustainable manner. I take great

exception to that. This is not a common area for us. A lot of our development has clearly not been environmentally sustainable. We don’t have to go beyond the city limits for that. To me, the greatest issue we have is climate change and we are well on our way to tripling our greenhouse gas emissions from the 1990 level to the time we fully recognized that we need to be reducing those by 50 to 80 percent within the next couple or three decades. So, sadly, that’s not a point that I can agree on.

There are many points there, as I was saying, that I do support. I like what I heard and I would like to focus on some of the things that will help us at looking beyond this four-year horizon. To me, the first thing is a policy lens, passing all of our actions, all of our policies, reviewing all of our legislation through this policy lens that looks at the action or policy contribute to net benefits in all three components of sustainability. Really, we want all three -- and that’s what sustainability is, a sustainable economy without other aspects of sustainability is not sustainable -- components of environmental, social and environmental sustainability and benefits must be part of every action and policy we take. It’s the failure to do that in the past that has led us to some of the big challenges and frustrations, Mr. Chair, that you expressed earlier of same old, same old. We need to do things differently. This lens can be huge in helping us do things differently.

Next I would like to mention climate change because it is so huge and pervasive for me. It pervades all of our policies and so on, all aspects of our lives. The incredible loss of permafrost that we are facing. We’ve seen nothing yet from what all the scientists say. Loss of 20 to 50 percent of our species, of our different kinds of animals and plants within a 20, 30 to 50-year time frame. The scientists are calling this ecosystem collapse. It’s when basically the system starts imploding. That’s a huge one for us. We’re so connected to the land in every way from the air we breathe to the water we drink and the food it provides, and still does. It’s not just the old way of life; we are totally connected and dependent on the land today.

Of course, change in water distribution and quality. The Minister of Environment and Natural Resources has talked about that. The loss of cultures. The ACIA, the Arctic Climate Impact and Adaptation study that was just done by the Arctic Council, an amazing study and basically predicts the complete loss of the Inuit culture within a generation or two. Mitigation and adaptation to climate change. Again, these are huge. The science is clear and unanimous. What will our commitment be to this? Again, we’re right there now. It’s act or be prepared for really, really significant impacts we don’t want to even consider at this point.

Economic diversification. This can add to our strength and our local economies, especially, I want to profile here the arts. Investment in the arts such as the Yukon is doing can really give us big returns. It can help with keeping professionals, retaining professionals that we need to retain, as well as adding to the depth and quality of life and cost of living even in our communities. I mentioned before the two aspects of more and better to our economy. I think we’re doing well on the more front, although, as I’ve mentioned, it’s precarious. It’s now time to focus on better. How can we diversify it? How can we make sure it responds to our values?

One thing that is of great concern to me is fuel costs. The Northwest Territories is so dependent on fossil fuels right

now and becoming increasingly so as we become more mechanized and so on. We want to build more highways and on it goes. We want more flights in and out. We know what’s happening with the cost of fuel; it’s tripled, probably, in the last five years; certainly doubled in the last couple of years. We need to have that be a…(inaudible)…Everything we do we should really consider what the fuel costs are and alternatives and efficiencies and opportunities for conservation of energy there.

Finally, and another strong point of agreement and support for me is focusing on prevention. I really like that aspect of the address, especially for me it’s the social and environmental issues. There are so many things we can do that will be win, win, win for us. Getting at the root causes of our health problems, social problems and environmental problems can really contribute in many ways, as well, to a strong and sustainable economy.

I’d like to emphasize here adequate, available and affordable housing, including resolution of land issues. I mentioned before childcare and early childhood education; well demonstrated to be effective and a good investment. Implementing the Literacy Program including enhanced adult literacy and basic education in small communities. Finally, of course, the place-based education throughout our learning systems where our learning is from early childhood through continued learning as adults is based on our land and in our communities and cultures.

Finally, of course, I think -- sorry, this really is my final one -- the land claims, land use plans, leadership and coordination of government. I think there’s a real role, a real challenge for us, as our self-government negotiations come to conclusion. We really need to focus and develop our leadership role. It’s a challenge. There’s no map out there for us. We’re unique in Canada, clearly. Our challenges are huge but I think we’re a huge bunch of people with great skills, and with some focus we can provide some leadership there. That will include a discussion on how we will manage our lands and resources over time and so on in really new ways. I think we should be able to come up with new ways of doing that so we’re not generating a lot of the issues that the current federal system does. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and I will be pleased to hear others' comments.