Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just wanted to give a quick response to the Minister’s comments and a bit of reflection on where I’ll be coming from with my more specific questions.

I’d like to start with the 6 percent increase. That’s quite high. I see we had a target of 3.6 and that’s going to vary from department to department, but I see this as a substantial increase for this department. We are committed to 3 percent increase hereafter. This is a good opportunity to start being more responsible with our dollars. We’re losing flexibility as we approach our borrowing limit here. Again, I don’t see a compelling reason for this increase in the department.

Having said that, I want to express some support for the expenditures in the youth programs. That, I think, again, might have been up for discussion had I been playing more of a role in how funds got dedicated in terms of balancing things with the departmental increase. I generally do support the increased support to youth programs. I notice they’re approaching a couple of million dollars here on top of existing, so these are new dollars.

In particular, I want to single out the increase for the Healthy Choices Framework. I think we have said we’re about prevention. I really do harp on that because I think it’s key to giving ourselves more

potential in the future, more flexibility. Because this Healthy Choices framework is an interdepartmental initiative, as the Minister noted, between MACA and Health and Social Services, Education, Culture and Employment. It’s these sorts of cross-departmental integrated initiatives that I think can give us good returns. I’m just noticing that will primarily go to after school pilot programming for primarily increased physical activity promoting physical activity in our youth. I’d like to see that even more finely directed into outdoor activities, things that can bring some of the other benefits we want. More familiarity with our land, perhaps giving the elders a role in helping inform how that physical activity could mesh with those goals.

I also want to commend the Minister this year for bringing forward the multisport games budget in the budget instead of as a supp later. I suppose the one question I have for the games is: what proportion of these dollars gets spent on travel? I’m particularly interested in travel out of the NWT and so on. I think it is time to look at, for example, the Arctic Winter Games and decide how we can get more benefits out of it for our communities and for our youth. That’s a general comment there.

The additional funding and some of the retracted funding for Arctic Energy Alliance, I’m in line with those in supporting those. I think particular focus on helping communities with their community energy plans is obviously needed. We have not achieved our targets there by far. My understanding is we have not at all made much progress in that direction. There have been a few. Perhaps I’m just out of date on this. The Minister’s indication that those plans and their incorporation or integration into the community sustainability plans will be complete by the deadline, as the end of this fiscal year seems pretty optimistic to me, but I’d be happy to hear that we’re going to achieve those.

I think also on the community energy plans, and this is something I have said before, it’s an opportunity to introduce some rigour, some targets. I think the days of just blindly providing money to partners without requiring that and some critical thinking are over. Again, I stress how fine the line is between us and our borrowing limit and the vulnerabilities we have there. So, again, I see there is some money for updating those community energy plans already. We’ll have to start introducing some real targets in what we expect our communities to achieve so we really do get some value from those dollars. I know there’s lots of happy consultants out there these days helping with these.

I’d like to move on just to the Community Capacity Building, which the Minister has heard me speak on before and I think all of us have recognized the need for building our community capacity and the challenges there. So I want to give a nod to, again,

across departmental work there involving Human Resources, NWT Association of Communities, Local Government Administrators and so on, and I’m hoping that those pilot project preps are already started. I think it would be great to see them get going and see some evaluation as well on those so we can find out what works, and that’s not an easy proposition I know. So I appreciate the extra focus there. I think it is recognized within this department.

I’ve mentioned, in review of earlier departments, the need for a good sustainable community administrator programs and one of four community capacity challenges is for good administrators that have the various skills there. I know there’s a program within MACA, within their governance programs, but I think there’s a real role for Aurora College and I’d love to see this department give the Minister of ECE a bit of a boot in the butt to get those programs on the ground and enjoy the benefits that they could bring. There are new ways of doing things and we need to be proactive and take advantage of those.

Last, support for increased enforcement of our trespass policy, our policies as they get more refined and developed, and I don’t see an increase in funding for recreational land use plans and I think that is an area where I would support a bit of an increased budget. Perhaps it’s buried in there and I haven’t spotted it, but one thing I hear is that people simply don’t get their land use inspected as they used to and that’s an important opportunity to interact with our public. Certainly we’ve lacked success in putting recreational land use plans together and on the ground in a way that takes care of some of the issues that we end up dealing with on a more emergency basis, but I know the department is taking some good steps in this direction. I would have been happy to see a bit more funding in the enforcement end of things. I’ll leave it at that, Mr. Chair. Thank you.