Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, I want to say also to the Minister in terms of his opening comments and in terms of the economic climate in the Northwest Territories and preparing our people for the various economic infusion, I guess I could say, in terms of how we're going to be impacted in our region and different areas that are being looked at and where we are working with the various groups. I guess, for myself, Mr. Chair, the smaller regions such as the Sahtu you have a very different playing field in terms of the users of the land. You have the mineral and mining people, you have the harvesters and you have the traditional trappers and hunters that use it, you have oil and gas and you have tourism. So it's very complex. How do you put together almost a season, because of the complexity of the people who use our land in our area and the department's working hard to, on the one hand, promote economic self-sufficiency but also being responsible land users, responsible land owners. Diversity...the diversification program that says...It's true what the Minister says; we can't always rely on one economic base here. It's a tough challenge for the Minister because we don't have the economic opportunities as other regions because of our situation. So during our winter road season we have a lot of activity going on and not so much in the summertime because of the situation we're in where we have to haul equipment on the barges and they only stage them in certain areas, so that poses a lot of issues for us. However, that's the lay of the land there and that's the way it is, but I think the process of getting to how do you, I don't know if you could stabilize or just to look at what is it that we need to do to look at other areas that could enhance our economy in the Northwest Territories, especially in our area at least.
One of the things that I'd really like to look at, and I'll ask the Minister more questions about the traditional economy aspect of it, of the beads, the sewing. There are some pretty good sewers up there and I know the arts and crafts, like any region, is we all have our unique and valuable sense of the work that we do in our region, especially by our older people. You know the wage economy has really taken over our lifestyle and I want to ask the Minister later on in terms of percentage of harvesters that we have in our region and how we will support them. It's a way of life and I know it's sometimes hard to categorize that as a business, but that's something that I want to ask him later on.
I just wanted to say that in terms of what we're doing in terms of ITI is, it seems to me, and just taking this from looking from this point of view into industry and tourism investment is that it seems to me that this department here is certainly -- I want to commend the Minister on this -- giving a lot of this stuff back to the region in terms of giving them some direction in terms of how we go about carving out our own economic areas. I think it's working in that sense. I wanted to say that. I hadn't seen this before in my three years so it seems to me that we have a lot of strong staff members working in our region, working for our communities, and I know there are areas we would certainly like to see improved but it seems that we're moving in the right direction. I wanted to say that on behalf of our region, Mr. Chair, that there are some areas that we certainly can work on and some areas that are going to require more of the department's, more of the government's support.
One point, I guess, I really want to follow up is on the Member from Hay River South, Mrs. Groenewegen, mentioned about the wood pellet initiative. I think that's a really good idea for our region. I'd like to know how this wood pellet initiative is being used within other areas of the government on a larger scale. I think it will be a really good area, because in our region it is isolated and we seem to have more difficulty with some of the programs. Again, it's no fault of anybody's, it's just because we're in that situation. Sometimes we lose out on the opportunities. I really like the idea that Mrs. Groenewegen proposed sometime in terms of wood pellet stoves and put wood pellets in some of our bigger departments within our government in the Sahtu region and also in some of our private business operations. I think that's a good enough issue to create our own wood pellet industry here in the Northwest Territories. I'm not too sure; I haven't seen any type of report in front of me that says this is what it costs for an industry or this is what it costs to have it. I don't know. I think it's a good idea but, again, I haven't seen enough reports, I haven't read enough in terms of if it's a viable and stable industry. I'm just thinking right here in terms of how to cut costs down in my communities in terms of the isolated situation we're in by having diesel fuel for our costs. Just some of these points I want to raise, Mr. Chair, and want to say that before we start on the budgets here, on the details. Thank you.