Thank you, Mr. Chair. I would like to thank the Premier for sharing his views and his vision in his sessional statement. At one point, he said that he believes that the 16th Assembly will be a turning point. I

have to say that I agree with the Premier. I see the next decade as vital to the progress of the NWT and it is a time when the NWT will need strong leadership. I think that this Assembly is well positioned to provide that leadership.

The Premier also said that if we make the right choices and if we act together, and I agree strongly with those statements as well. It is important for us to consider the views of all the residents of the NWT whenever we consider any action that we take. It is important that we act. We cannot continue to maintain the status quo. We need to go forward. It has been mentioned previously that this is an exciting time. I totally agree with that. I think that there are a lot of things that we can accomplish if we work together, if we continue to think outside the box, as the expression goes, and if we continue to take each other’s ideas and refine them to suit everybody within the territory.

The Premier spoke about protecting and preserving the environment. I agree with that statement, as well. I feel that we need to have considered and controlled development from both mining and from oil and gas sectors. I feel we need to reform our regulatory process. We will have to see whether or not Mr. McCrank can do that to the satisfaction of this particular Assembly. I have my doubts, but we will have to wait and see. As we have

development, we have to make sure that we establish protected areas prior to development; that we identify restrictions on development in and around the protected areas and that we do that before development occurs, not after development occurs. It is not going to do us any good if we do it after the fact. We have to be proactive in terms of protecting the environment, and I believe that my colleague has already stated that he feels every action we take must be made in consideration of the affect that it is going to have on our environment and on our climate. I would agree with that. We also need to make sure that we work to mitigate the effects that climate change is already reaping on our fragile territory.

In terms of devolution, the Premier mentioned that we need to manage, control and make decisions to govern resource development. We need to benefit from its revenue. Absolutely. I feel that we need to try to wean ourselves away from the federal government, but I also feel very strongly that we should not take on any responsibility or any programs and services unless we get adequate funding to put them in place and to deliver those programs and services. Any deal that we make with the federal government, as far as I am concerned, has to make financial sense. There is absolutely no reason for us to take over a program and service and not have the funds to be able to deliver it.

In terms of health and social services, again the Premier stated that health and wellness of our people is a pressing concern. I can’t disagree with that statement either. The advancement of health, social services and education, day care programs, all of those are things that we need to maintain and to try to improve in every community in the NWT if we possibly can. A number of areas that I consider we need to look at, and this is only a few of many, but realistic funding for non-government organizations, and provision of a larger number of affordable housing units, not that they could necessarily be more affordable, but we need more housing units which are affordable to the majority of our people. We need a reduction in violent crime. That is right across all of our communities unfortunately. We need to work at increasing the level of education in every one of our children in school.

One of the things that we need to work on, I believe, is to develop functional relationships with regional governments, treaty organizations, and municipal governments. There are many organizations out there which are working towards their own goals and visions, but they interact with ours immeasurably. There is no way we can divest ourselves of the actions that other organizations take. We need to work with them. It is going to be impossible for us to work with them if we don’t talk with them. I think there has been a bit of a lack in the previous Assembly and probably Assemblies before that. There seems to be a lack of either understanding on the part of both parties when they try to get together to discuss or there is a lack of actually getting together and having meaningful conversations. I think it is something that this Assembly can work on and should work on. I think if we can have a dialogue and if we can actually speak to the other organizations that have an impact on the work that we do, then it is going to be for the betterment of everybody concerned and we are going to get far further ahead than we would if we try to fight with each other.

One of the things that I don’t think the Premier mentioned in his statement but that is an important concern for me is the fact that we have a sort of a trend of urbanization occurring in the territory. Some people are moving from small communities into the larger centres. We are tending to get regional centres, Yellowknife for sure which has half of the territory’s population, but we are getting increasing populations in Hay River, Fort Smith and Inuvik. That urbanization puts a stress on our larger towns and city. When residents migrate to a regional centre, it creates needs in the regional centre in improvements in infrastructure or additions to programs and services. It puts a stress on the buildings in those centres, on the roads, on water and sewer, all of those things. I think probably the greater stress, though, is on the programs and services which tend to be required in generally the area of health and social services. People will migrate to the larger centre for a particular health service that is not available in their own community. They will send their children to a regional centre for education because they feel that it is better than what can be had in the community. As soon as you add numbers to the population, the same program or service that was available last year at probably a reasonable level is not going to be available this year because we are starting to tax it by having too many demands on it. We need to consider, when we are providing funding for programs and services, that we are providing it relative to the number of people that are accessing the service.

I think, though, that it is important to remember that any time we have a regional centre, and any time we put money into a regional centre, it is not just benefitting that centre. It is benefitting the whole of the Territories. One of my pet peeves is that we need not necessarily have just a treatment centre for the drying out of people with addictions, but we need a treatment centre which takes them from their addicted self to their clean self and supports them through a period of time until they are integrated back into the community and can exist in the community on their own. I think what we tend to do now is we put people into an addictions centre. We clean them up and then we throw them back out into the community and say, okay, here you go; survive. If they don’t have a support system, they are not going to survive. They are going to fall back into the way that they know, the easy way, because it is not easy to take yourself out of an addicted state.

One of the things, I guess the last thing, that I would like to mention is that our economy, particularly in Yellowknife, and I know certainly some of the small communities are not experiencing the joy of a booming economy like Yellowknife is, but a booming economy is a positive but it also creates opportunities. It does create opportunities, but it certainly can and I think is having a negative effect on our government. I think the Premier stated effective and efficient government. That, again, is something which I would agree with him on. It is something to which we should be aspiring, but I see that we do have pressing needs within the public service and outside our public service, particularly for training. Apprentices are one area where I don’t think we are doing enough to provide training for people who wish to become apprentices and can then work their way into the economy relative to the development that is up and coming. I am thinking particularly of the pipeline and of the diamond industry.

Enhancement of social problems is also something which is a direct result of a booming economy. The economy brings in lots of money. Lots of money brings in things to spend it on, and that tends to be a detriment to people’s health and well-being. So I think that somehow it is something we are going to have to look at during this Assembly, is the educational training and employment needs of our residents need to be addressed. It is important to me that we provide equal opportunity in every community in the Territories for the opportunities that this booming economy is providing. It is not easily done. I can’t say that I have a solution at this point. I don’t have a solution at this point, but I do think that it is something that we need to work towards.

With that, I think that is about all I have at this point. Thank you, Mr. Chair.