Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The Ministers’ statements, I’m just going to summarize my comments to them on their statements.
Certainly with this legislation, the 16th , we have
presently said we’ve spent close to just over $1 billion on infrastructure. That’s quite impressive. Yet when you still look at the infrastructure in the Northwest Territories, that’s still not enough to our assets in our communities. It’s a matter of
allocating. Like Mr. Ramsay said, some you win and some you lose and some of the infrastructure that gets placed on the capital plans for discussion for approval.
I’m really interested in terms of the federal stimulus infrastructure dollars that are going to be coming to a halt. It’s almost like feast to famine when you’re looking at the next couple of years for infrastructure in the Northwest Territories. I think our fiscal strategy would have to really kick in and hold policies really tight on how we’re going to go forward in missing our partnership with the federal government on infrastructure investment in the Northwest Territories. In small communities I know that the Government of the Northwest Territories is a major employer in economic opportunities to almost 50 percent of economic employment comes from the Northwest Territories government in capital infrastructure.
The issue of housing is not on the capital books but it’s in our discussion for information. I look forward to having discussion with the Minister on how we go about fulfilling some of the needs that the Minister heard from my riding and other ridings, such as vacant lots and vacant houses and putting these programs to meet the needs of the people of the Northwest Territories. I do want to say that I do look forward to continuing on with the Minister in a new direction for the capital planning budget for fall time. That makes a lot of sense. That deferred maintenance is going to be right up there in priorities.
I want to say that MACA does address funding for community governments and is providing a stable source of funding. I’m not too sure that it’s adequate, because the needs of the communities are so high. We are giving them a lot of money, yet the needs seem to be so huge in terms of which projects they can get in the community. I look forward to some discussion in that area.
One issue I wanted to look at was in terms of infrastructure and capital in our schools in the small communities. I hope the message is out there that because you’re in a small community it means this is the type of quality education you’re going to get automatically, versus what you’re going to get in the larger centres that have a different level of education in their schools. We are trying to work hard on this capital infrastructure budget to get some of those quality education courses into our schools and to bring our students up to par that would be equivalent to larger centres.
Mr. Chair, I wanted to say that overall I’m happy with how this has come about. There are a lot more questions, a lot more that needs to be said to the specific departments. I want to thank the staff and the people who brought this forward to us in this manner here.