Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I, like others, am happy to see the kind of money that we are expending on capital in this year’s budget. I was listening to my colleague Mr. Beaulieu express his concern about the seeming disconnect between the wishes, desires or aspirations of the people at the community and what our government is able to deliver. I don’t know how we address that, but it reminded me of the days when a Commissioner like Stuart Hodgson would fly around in an airplane and go community to community with one staff person and talk to the community leaders, write a cheque and fly away. I tell you, there was something to be said for that kind of directness that did exist previously.

Now we have, of course, a huge bureaucratic process that goes behind our capital planning process and it does seem frustrating. It doesn’t seem like it is a lack of resources that is the holdback, but it does seem like things have to go through such a rigorous screening. By the time the stuff gets delivered, it costs so much money.

I had expressed this before and I will say it again: I am all for good quality capital infrastructure. I don’t think we should build stuff that is second rate, but I also don’t think we should build stuff thinking it is only going to last for 40 years. Midterm retrofit and refurbishing most of our capital buildings is every 20 years. I don’t know what it would cost to build stuff that would last longer, but I am not really sure why that is.

I am also always very concerned about the amount of what we call soft costs that go into these projects; the architectural, the engineering and for things that you wouldn’t really think you need a lot of that kind of creative approach brought to them. I have used this as an example before, but I will say it again: if you are building fire halls in communities, I don’t think we need to design a new template for every single one. Where there is opportunity for a cookie cutter application of capital, then let’s do that. Certainly on other things like schools and hospitals and other more high-end kind of expense of capital infrastructure, there is a need to do a lot of consultation and assess the needs of the community and put more care into the planning.

You look at the Master Development Plan for Stanton or you look at the Master Development Plan for Hay River for the replacement of the hospital, it does seem like there is an extraordinary amount of money that is spent in the planning process. It is millions per capital project, truth be known. I guess it is something I don’t quite fully understand and don’t fully support, with all due respect to all those architects and engineers out there.

I also think that, when looking at capital in general, I have mentioned the life expectancy, we should have an eye on that and, of course, on the operating costs. I may be repeating what somebody else has already said here, but when we are building new infrastructure, we have an opportunity to really think seriously about how that construction will reflect on the cost of operating that facility for years to come, because I think sometimes the cost of operating accumulatively overtakes the cost of putting it on the ground in the first place. There are certainly lots of technology and ideas out there of doing that more efficiently. I think that this will be a boost to the economy.

I hope the capacity is there for Northerners to take advantage of most of these capital dollars. The competitive process will ensure the government’s interests are protected, but if we can make sure

with as much as within our capacity to ensure that the Northerners benefit from these capital dollars, of course that makes it even more beneficial. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.