Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As we go through another budgetary process, I think there are a few things that I feel are missing here. One of the things and the frustration from the Mackenzie Delta residents I represent feel that this government is out of touch and out of sight in most cases to those people in those smaller isolated communities and communities sitting in the Mackenzie Delta by way of hearing their voices in regards to I stand up in this House time after time, raise issues for policing services to medical services to programs and services which are fundamental to the basic building blocks of communities. You need to have healthy, vibrant communities. We talked about safe communities. You can’t have safe communities without policing. You can’t have healthy people without good health care. You cannot have an educated society without having the jobs and the economic potential that those young people have knowing that once you are educated, you will be able to fit into the economy of the Northwest Territories and not continue to be a social statistic sitting at home because, for some reason or another, your education is not good enough. If you don’t have the skills, you are not good enough.

I think this government has to focus on individuals in the Northwest Territories from the small communities to the larger centres. The focus of this

government clearly is in the larger communities and not where it needs the most attention, which is the small communities. For myself, I am frustrated to a point of coming here asking questions day after day, tabling motions in this House, writing questions, trying to get information from this government and from different Ministers and yet all they have to do is take action. A little action will go a long ways to improve services for people in small communities. That is all they want. Let us see a nurse in our community. Let us see the RCMP show up once in awhile. Let us ensure that young people growing up in Colville Lake or Tsiigehtchic, Fort McPherson or Aklavik or any other aboriginal community in the Northwest Territories have an opportunity to achieve the dream that they have of being successful in life.

This government has big dreams: $165 million bridge, $600 million Taltson project, $100 million school in Inuvik. But I think, at the end of the day, if those people do not get out of the social situation they find themselves today, they will continue to be statistics.

I think the frustrating part that I feel of small communities is that we have totally shifted focus from the Northwest Territories as I used to know it where we have 51 communities between Nunavut and the Northwest Territories. We had better services back then than we have today after division. That’s the result of division. We got less, but the larger communities got more. For me that is not the way government is supposed to work.

The foundation of any government is built on how they treat society and the society that they’re responsible for and the people they’re responsible for. You take care of the sick, the lame, the disabled people and the people that are struggling. That’s where government’s role fits in, not help big companies build $600 million hydro plants so you can give them cheap power, so they can send their diamonds over to Antwerp. That’s where we’re going. I think at the end of the day, this government has to really refocus its ears on exactly where you’re going, but, more importantly, what are we doing that these mega projects that we’re putting out there are achieving results. How many aboriginal people are employed on these job sites? How many people are getting their apprentice tickets on these job sites? How many people are staying in the Northwest Territories? There’s $240 million that migrates out of the Northwest Territories by way of people’s wages every year just from the mining industry; $240 million in wages.

I think it’s fundamentally clear from the frustration of the aboriginal leadership I represent in regard to the Gwich’in leadership in regard to the frustration they have with this government, in regard to negotiated contracts, in regard to obligations we have in our land claim agreements. We talk about caribou

issues here, the Gwich’in are already in court with the Yukon because of the same type of hunting issue where the Yukon government imposed restrictions on them that you can only hunt bulls. Again, they have a treaty right, they have an obligation and are again being ignored by government. We are in the same boat here today in regard to the Bathurst issue. We’re able to work out a solution in regard to the Inuvialuit, the Gwich’in, the Sahtu, in regard to the Bluenose herd. Every community that has 25 tags, but if any of their members want to go hunt caribou, you have a tag. They solved that problem. They didn’t have to go to court. They worked it out and determined amongst themselves, sat down together and had meetings in all the communities, got everybody together and said what do we do. They resolved it themselves without having the Minister come here with a sledgehammer, pound on the table and say, well, I’ve got the authority.

That’s the frustration of being over on this side of the House and seeing exactly where are we really going as government. I think at the end of the day we, I’ll throw this word out there, people in my riding are considering what do we have to do to get our own government? Do we have to separate? Do we go join our cousins in Alaska and our cousins in the Yukon? Is that what it’s going to take to get better program services out of this government? Because I think that’s where it may have to go.

I think at the end of the day the question has to be asked, are we better off when we came into this government in regard to the people in Tsiigehtchic or the people in the small communities, the unemployed. The people are struggling because of income support, because of housing. I think at the end of the day you’ll get a unanimous yes, that things are worse today than they were when this government took office.

I think that side of the House has to go into those communities, go into somebody’s home that’s in social housing. All you’ve got to do is go in, ask for a cup of tea, open the fridge and see if there’s anything in there, because I bet you 50 percent of the time there won’t be anything in that fridge because people are struggling in our communities under the programs and services of this government.

Mr. Speaker, I think this government has to do a better job in ensuring programs and services are really there to help people than to make them beggars on their own lands. If you take away a person’s right or ability to sustain themselves regardless of if it’s a hunting right, a fishing right, a right to catch rabbits, if that person knows that they’re better off in the bush than they are in the community -- which most of them are because out there they can sustain themselves -- but because of the government bureaucracy and the red tape in

our communities, they are basically being controlled to a point where every nickel you make, the elders payments that they get because of a land claim, is clawed back by government. They’re no farther ahead by getting a payment for a land claim because you’re 70 years old, because two months down the road government isn’t going to help you. Oh, you’ve got too much money, you’ve got $2,700, can’t help you there, come back in two months and we might be able to help you. These are elders who are 70 years old. It’s sad, but it’s true.

I think, you know, I hate to put the pitch on this one of how bad things really are, but maybe what we should do is get some people from that side of the table going to our communities and sit down with the elders who are struggling and see for yourself what I’m talking about. I think sometimes you get too far up in that pyramid and you’ve forgot about the little guy that’s on the ground. I think that’s what’s happening to Members on that side of the House.

I feel that sometimes it’s great to have economic development, it’s great to have opportunities there, but if you can’t access those opportunities, can’t be hired because you don’t have the skills, you don’t have the certification, the other thing, sorry, you don’t have working boots or steel toed boots, you can’t come to work because you can’t afford to buy yourself the pair of boots to go to work in the first place, so how do you expect those people to get ahead?

Mr. Speaker, I think it’s time to allow this government to refocus its attention to where the resources should be expended and quit building these humungous things. I know it’s great for Yellowknife, the dementia centre, we’ve got to spend $2 million to operate it, we’re going to have a glorified clinic here, but Tsiigehtchic has a health centre with nobody to work in it. I think, if anything, we have to move some of those people out of the larger centres, put them in the communities in regard to ensuring that the services are really provided.

Mr. Speaker, I think that this government has to ensure that there is a different way of breeding wealth in the system of government we have. I know we had great intentions to allow municipalities to manage, we allowed municipalities to take advantage of federal capital infrastructure dollars, gas tax and whatnot, but the way I see it, the only groups that are going to benefit from that are the groups with high populations. The little groups like Tsiigehtchic with 170 people or Colville Lake with 120, the gas tax is so minute you couldn’t build yourself a good sized house for the amount of money that you get, never mind trying to deliver services in your community, because it’s based on per capita. Per capita does not work. You have to have a base funding formula that allows you to

operate water treatment plants, maintain your roads and ensure that you have public infrastructure in every community that allows you those services so that those people can receive similar services throughout the Northwest Territories.

Mr. Speaker, this government has three more budget cycles to go before the next election. Mr. Speaker, I hope that somehow we’re able to refocus the wealth of this government by way of the $1.3 billion we’ve spent every year and ensure that it goes to the people in most need and ensure that those dollars are being spent on the people that really are Northerners that live here, make this their homes, who we know at the end of the day are not going to migrate out because the job isn’t here. We’re staying here because this is our home. I think at some point in time you have to ensure that aboriginal people in the Northwest Territories are being heard, are being listened to and being told if you are going to do something, you do it. You don’t say, oh yeah, well, we’ll give you a nurse February 1st and then come back to a meeting in Inuvik and

say sorry, I’m working on it. Working on it does not put a nurse in the community. Somebody has got to shake the tree and shake the bush and say get that nurse in the community under ministerial authority or take the money out for Tsiigehtchic and give it to the community of Tsiigehtchic and they can hire their own nurse. At least they’ll get a nurse in their community. Or maybe they have to go to United Nations or take a constitutional challenge with regard to aboriginal rights in not ensuring that the health and well-being of those people are being taken care of.

I’d like to elaborate a little on this caribou issue, because something that just totally gets me is why do we have a Department of Environment that allowed this to happen in the first place? We had a herd of 400,000 animals; now we have 30,000. Who is in charge of those animals? The Department of Environment. Yet at the 11th hour

they show up with a sledgehammer and say, sorry, we have to stop you guys from hunting today because the herd disappeared. Where did it go? This government should have caught this a lot sooner than to have to come here at the 11th hour

and tell the average people that they can’t hunt anymore. But then they give the outfitters $300,000. Here, we’ll compensate you guys. You guys got $300,000, it should take care of you. Are we going to compensate the aboriginal harvesters for taking away their right to hunt? I think that this government has to explain to the people of the Northwest Territories what action they took in regard to how this situation turned out to what it is.

More importantly, there is nothing mentioned in any of your discussions or documentation on industrial development impacts on this herd. This herd is in the centre of where the most exploration and development has taken place in the last decade in

the Northwest Territories. The calving grounds are just north of the major development area. You have trucks going up this ice road every six minutes. Six minutes. When the caribou is on this side of the road and a truck is passing every six minutes, well, the caribou is probably going to get a little hungry waiting to get across that road. Yet there are no road closures during that time. In our region of the Gwich’in Settlement Region we shut the harvesting down for two weeks so that the caribou can migrate across the highway. We do it because we feel it’s part of our obligation to do so. But as government that’s what you should have been doing.

The other thing that gets me is the number of outfitter tags that this government was giving away. I believe one outfitter had 120 tags. How many outfitters were there? Calculate all the amount of caribou that was taken by the outfitters and compare it to the aboriginal harvest that you’re trying to restrict today. But you compensated them. But you aren’t able to justify why you’ve taken away the subsistence ability of the aboriginal people.

With that, I will leave it at that. Have a good day.