Thank you, Mr. Chairman. For the record, I will, as my colleague Mr. Ramsay has stated his concern and his opposition to the macroeconomic unit, I will repeat my support for this unit. It is an expectation that we do need a level and a depth and a bit of sophistication brought to economic impacts and circumstances that this is my expectation that this will bring.
Mr. Chairman, I also look at situations like Mr. Miltenberger highlighted so eloquently tonight and in so many other addresses to this Assembly about the need to look at things through an environmental lens. We have
heard it for years and years that there should also be a social lens applied to whatever project or initiative or policy or program that may come our way.
It is my expectation that these are things that this unit will bring into play for us. It will not just be a macroeconomic, perhaps some of the terminology could be reviewed or revamped as this thing gets going, but I do endorse this increment to our skill set.
Mr. Chairman, it's already been mentioned. I had it on my notes here to make sure it got some airing was the accumulated $65 million that we have deemed a valid cost for Metis and aboriginal and Inuit health care benefits that Northern Affairs deems not. That is one of the fundamental things that we should go to bat for, and we should go to bat for it loud and as hard as we can. On one side, it's a fiscal situation that we are grappling with, but it puts these other Canadians at a different tier of care and responsibility at government. I think that's wrong. I hope that we can achieve not just some bill collecting here, but some new terms under which everybody will be deemed and entitled to this same level of care.
Mr. Chairman, my final point in this area here as has been played recently. Mr. Chairman, at the Minister's invitation, our Minister of Finance and the federal Minister of Finance, I put my ore into the federal budget and said the northern residents tax deduction, it is high time after 19 years, should be reviewed and increased. We went through an exercise here a little while ago where we asked the Premier and the Minister to work with his counterpart in our sister territories and see what kind of a combined effort we could get going. I am wondering if the Minister has anything new to report on that front and whether or not we can anticipate something potentially in the next budget, Mr. Chairman.