Thank you, Mr. Chairman. A lot of regions get capital from different departments, and we deal with a lot of government infrastructure, but what we’re starting to see is a trend in this department to move items out of communities and into regions. I’ll use an example.

In regard to Aklavik, because it’s sort of isolated, when it’s wintertime, they take the vehicle out of the community, and they take it to Inuvik for the summer. The individual resource officer has to drive around in a four-wheeler all summer, because that’s all he has. Yet he still has to move goods and services to the river and go out on the land and whatnot. In regard to the Dempster Highway, a similar thing happens where they take the vehicles to Inuvik, and they leave vehicles that don’t even have radios, and they expect them to patrol the Dempster Highway.

I think that as a government we have a responsibility to protect our employees, especially when they’re in the field, and to make sure the equipment that we pass in this House by way of capital items is basically used where it’s approved for that capital expenditure.

I’d just like to ask the Minister: why is it that this continues to happen, especially in regard to community capital and also to maintain and operate our resource operations in communities? They need that equipment to do their job, yet it seems that everything’s been taken out and moved into the regional centres. I’d like to ask the Minister: exactly what is the policy in regard to ensuring that the people working in the field are equipped, have vehicles with radios in them and also that the equipment that they’re using is up to specific standards to ensure that they can do their jobs without being given hand-me-downs from the regional operations?