Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the comments of my colleagues here. There’s certainly a ring of commonality out there. I’m sure the Ministers are listening. I think there are some real opportunities out there and I’m not convinced at all that we’re capturing those opportunities.

I want to start off by thanking the Minister for his budget address. I’m looking forward to getting into the detail, as I’ve talked about this a couple times today.

I note that three years ago we set a goal of living within our means and I will be commenting on that subsequently here.

With regard to the economy, I think I am on track with the Minister that the risks are clear in terms of as far as he went, energy prices, particularly oil prices, are rising. Many governments have high levels of debt and situations that are not sustainable. I think that one thing that governments are finding, both in Canada and worldwide, is that the costs of our changing climate are large and accelerating ever more rapidly, and if we do not plan for that and reflect that in our budgets, our sustainability will also be clear.

I wanted to note, I have mentioned already the cushion of $60 million and some of the challenges we will have there. Again, I appreciate the Minister establishing that cushion. In terms of his reference to working with Finance Canada to review the borrowing limit to be concluded by April, this is not something we have heard much about, so I am -- other than perhaps that it is happening -- looking forward to hearing how we are working with the Minister, what is our input, what are our goals, are we actually talking about increasing our debt limit given that we have proven already that we cannot live within our means, referring to the opening of the address. Again, I would appreciate some comments from the Minister on that.

The Minister went on to talk about the Program Review Office. I hope the Minister can detect a huge sense of frustration from Regular Members on this. We were expecting big things from this and some gains to be made, the shifting of priorities with the dollars identified, and I can’t see any productivity from this office -- not saying there hasn’t been any, but certainly not any that I have seen -- and when is this going to happen is the basic question.

The second point there: assess the savings that have been achieved as a result of investments in energy reduction. I would encourage the Minister to do that assessment in terms of the full cost accounting approach that captures things like the number of jobs brought to the Northwest Territories economy, the renewable energy benefits such as reduced emissions and local business development and so on. The Government of the Northwest

Territories has opportunities for revenue growth, I agree with that through our tax regime and I look forward to the development of that. I am pleased that the Minister has included that.

I also agree that we have some work to do on the cost and size or role and size of our government and I am looking forward to working further on that. I am sure that will be front and centre for the 17th Assembly as well.

Moving to Supporting the Economy. The biggest thing there that I see is the diversification, and we have put efforts, especially through our SEED program, into diversifying the economy, but here I want to reflect the comments of my colleague Ms. Bisaro. We need a whole new approach. Diversification is indeed key, but we haven’t been effective with our many investments and I think this new approach should include, simply, especially in our small communities since this is an area that we have talked about repeatedly, and we are not making any gains there, our small community economies are not, they are just not happening. We need a new approach that focuses, for example, on the provision of our basic needs. Energy, food, and housing are three of those, just by way of example. Focussing on those in ways that will develop skills and thereby have other benefits, jobs and development of entrepreneurship and so on, those are all side effects from simply deciding that we will not import these things from afar and have jobs afar. We will from now on focus more and more and more on providing for our people from their local and regional resources. Therein lies our best hope and the sort of new approach that’s required that supports the social fabric, as well, and addresses many, many of our wide and diverse goals as a government.

For example -- and the Minister has heard me talk about the need for a comprehensive approach -- the cross-departmental approach, government-wide approach. We still are not penetrating those departmental barriers, and I don’t see that reflected in the comments, either. We’re still compartmentalizing when we need to be identifying how these things need to work together and how we can penetrate those barriers; for example, when we’re talking about a proposal to spend a million dollars in our small community for a job creation program. Those need to be focused on. For example, housing tenants and developing the skills needed for maintenance of housing, for training on how to use a chainsaw for producing firewood for the community and implementing a district energy system and these sorts of approaches. So those sorts of connections, connecting the dots, are still not being made.

I believe the Minister misspoke when he talked about lowering the cost of electricity. We have not lowered the cost of electricity. We have reduced the

electricity rates in our small communities and shifted that cost on to the taxpayer. I keep harping on this because we need to be accurate in order to know where our costs are for this government. We are speaking here as a government providing a budget. So again, I highlight the need to speak accurately here.

I’m happy to see that businesses do have an opportunity now in the small communities, they have reduced electricity rates, but I’m disappointed that we’re not making more progress on actually reducing the costs, as the Minister claims we are doing with that working.

There are a number of things that I support but I feel are too modest. I support the Community Harvesters Assistance Program. That’s good. It also identified $150,000 for agriculture infrastructure and support for commercial harvesting of wild foods. That’s clearly inadequate and I think we need to bring some more focus on that.

The $300,000 identified in the budget for housing, a sustainable housing strategy, again, this needs to serve our government-wide goals and it needs to be done in a way that enhances skill development, jobs, the social fabric in our communities, local economic development and so on, by requiring our housing tenants to participate in society and in addressing our costs to the extent that they’re not employed. This is, again, the new approach that’s required and these are things that include investing in our people so we cannot separate these things. We cannot separate reducing the cost of living from investing in our people and from sustainable communities.

The example of the Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder syndrome person is an excellent move. We know that there are huge mental health issues out there. We hear about them daily and they’ve been discussed today. We need to bring some focus in that area despite the health costs we are having.

Mr. Chair, I see I’m running out of time so I think I will save the rest. There are some good moves on protecting the environment but there are still some tune-ups needed and some linkages needed to be made there. I’ll look forward to giving more detail on my general response through the budget address opportunity. Thank you.