Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I won’t take up too much more time. I just wanted to say I really enjoyed listening to my colleagues speak about the sessional statement and what their priorities are for this government and the coming four years. There are a few other issues that I just wanted to touch on that I believe this government has to pay attention to. The first one is the migrant worker issue. We’ve got over 3,000 migrant workers in the Northwest Territories that take with them over $300 million out of our territory every year, annually, and $300 million is a lot of money that circulated locally in our local economy would go a long way. I don’t think it can be underestimated the importance of trying to get people to move here, to live here and to stay here in the Northwest Territories. We can’t afford to have 3,000 migrant workers, especially when we still have pockets of high unemployment in some of our smaller communities. Any agreements that are signed in the future for resource development projects have to include a tiered approach so that if they don’t have any employees from the area that the diamond mine or the resource extraction is taking place, such as the North Slave region, they would go to the Mackenzie Delta and they would find some people there who wanted to work before they went down to Edmonton, Saskatoon or wherever looking for employees; Newfoundland, for that matter. I believe we have to put our people to work here first. If companies are doing business in the Northwest Territories, our people should be front and centre and should be getting jobs and they shouldn’t be flying people in and flying people out and taking money out of our territory. It’s bad enough that we don’t get any resource royalties from the federal government, but when the jobs and the money also leave, it’s a double whammy for us. It begs a question of how real is our economy anyway.
When you look at some of the big contracts that are signed with joint venture arrangements with northern companies, they sign these big contracts with southern firms that have the expertise and the manpower, they come in and do the work with their manpower and pay a small percentage to the northern joint venture company, five percent, six percent. It’s just a paper transaction. It doesn’t mean there are any more jobs for northerners. I think that’s a key area that this government needs to focus on: how to get people to move here. If it’s through taxation, I will be the first to say I am not a big fan of taxation, but if we’ve got 3,000 migrant workers out there taking $300 million annually out of this territory. Taxation might be the answer, Mr. Chairman.
I also wanted to mention that, to me, the environment certainly is front and centre. We certainly need to look at ways and means to protect our environment. We also need to come up with a balanced approach in doing that because we also need opportunities for our people. We need that sustainable development. We need opportunities for people. We need to protect the environment, as well.
I also believe that we need to work with other governments, aboriginal governments across our territory. During the life of the last government, there was just a little bit too much infighting. We all didn’t get along. It’s too small of a territory with too much at risk for us not to get along with one another and to try to sing off the same song sheet when it comes to dealing with the federal government. So we need to really be leaders and get out there and work with the other governments in our own territory and have a united voice with the federal government.
In closing, there is one other thing that I wanted to mention. The last government again started out with the agencies and board review. They got to a certain point -- there is 112 of them in the territory -- where decisions had to be made, didn’t want to make them, put the review on the shelf, collected dust. Let’s get out the duster, get that thing off the shelves and let’s make some decisions on boards and agencies. It’s costing us a tremendous amount of money. Let’s do that. That should be one of the first orders of business. We shouldn’t even need to wait for a strategic plan or visit to dust that off and get to work on doing some work there. That was some of the best work that I saw when I was here the last four years, was the work that was done on the agencies and boards review. It was thorough and well done. There were some good recommendations in there and we needed to start making decisions and we didn’t have the guts last time to do it. Let’s get out and do it, Mr. Chairman.
Again, thanks to all the other Members with their comments and it is going to be an exciting four years and I am looking forward to being part of it. Thank you.
---Applause