Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is never easy putting together a budget to try to cover off everything and be everything to everyone, but there are a few things in here that I just want to comment on, if I could.

There is a lot of good news in here too, but there are some things here that I just have to provide a little bit of comment on. Like my colleagues, as we go through the detail and we get into the budget session, I will have much more to say on these things, so I am going to get going on some of these highlights.

Again, health care spending for me has been an issue for a number of years. We continue to allow the authorities to bleed red ink. Nobody seems to want to take the bull by the horns and actually do something. I have suggested a solution to the Minister at Social Programs committees. It is not going to be an easy fix, but there is a solution there. That would be to get rid of the authorities, pull it all back in. The more moving parts you have in something like health care and when you are spending that much money, you better make sure that every dollar you are spending is going to be one that is well spent. I don’t think we have done enough there. I think we continue to look for solutions.

The Foundation for Change is just another example of the department going out and looking for something to pin a decision on, but some of the decisions are just so readily apparent that you just struggle to understand why decisions aren’t being made. I certainly wish that, and I know that it is not an easy job managing the Department of Health and Social Services. I do wish the Minister success in trying to manage that, but we are getting very late in life for this government and not much has changed there. I have to be blunt when I say that.

If we want to look at family violence, that is another area that domestic family violence you can lump elder abuse in with that. I will be talking more about that as session goes along, but I am glad to hear that we are going to have some kind of evaluation put in place to see that programs that we have at the community level are actually making a difference. In my mind, Mr. Chairman, I don’t see how that is happening. Just recently an individual had 48 prior convictions, 18 of them of a violent nature, beats his girlfriend. He gets five months in

jail. The sentencing has got to be addressed. We have to get tougher with folks who are committing acts of violence against their spouse, against elders, against children. We have to take domestic violence very seriously in the Territory. Again, you will be hearing me talk a lot more about that as session gets going.

I am very concerned about respite care here in the Northwest Territories. I am concerned about the money that was taken from the Yellowknife Association for Community Living. I support 100 percent a territorial-wide program, but I told anybody that would listen when the funding was cut for YACL, that the government, it would be impossible for the government to come up with a coordinated meaningful plan to address respite care in the Northwest Territories, so I am still having a whole lot of trouble understanding how that is exactly going to happen when you have one program that is working and you have that in favour of going for a territorial-wide program. To heck with the program that was working, that’s not good management or sound management, in my mind. I think that should be a model off which the territorial program is developed.

In reducing the cost of living, again this is something that I’ve talked about many times in the past. I don’t think there’s been a concerted effort by the government to convince the federal government that the three territories should be at least a GST-free zone or at the very least maybe the discussion has to take place on making the three northern territories income tax-free zones as well. Negotiate that into a final devolution agreement for the people of the Northwest Territories and the other two territories. You want to attract people to live here and raise families here, there has to be that type of incentive and we need to be ramping up our efforts with the federal government to get at that.

Looking at the sin tax, we’re raising tax on cigarettes and alcohol again. To me this is just a backward approach to trying to grab some cash from people. The people it’s going to hurt the most are children in families whose parents are addicted to smoking and addicted to drinking. Who is going to pay the price is the kids. The children. That’s who’s going to pay the price in an effort for the government to grab some more money. That’s not going to stop anybody from smoking. It’s not going to stop anybody from drinking. If they want to drink and smoke, they’re going to get the smokes and the booze and the family unit, at the end of the day, is going to be the one that pays for that.

Looking at the Taltson situation, I really am having a hard time believing that the project has had five years in the making. We’ve spent about $13 million or $14 million and they submit an incomplete submission and it gets sent back. How is that possible? How do we sit back and let that happen?

It just boggles my mind how we have scant resources but we can throw around $13 million or $14 million and have an incomplete submission sent in. No wonder it got sent back. That’s something we need to get on top of. That’s money we’re not going to get back.

We do have a bunch of good news. Some of it was highlighted in the Minister’s budget address. Gahcho Kue is a big one for the Northwest Territories, the development of that diamond mine. The seasonal overland route, that’s a big positive. If the Government of the Northwest Territories continues working with the feds and industry on development of that seasonal overland route, that would be a great benefit for the Northwest Territories as well.

I can’t underestimate what the Mackenzie Gas Project will do for the Northwest Territories in terms of development, opportunities for our people, exploration, turning us into the energy giant we can be. All the potential is there. I think that moving forward is such a huge opportunity for our Territory. Also Prairie Creek, Avalon, Tyhee.

The government did a good job. If I could, and I spoke about it a little bit in my statement, but the injection of the infrastructure dollars was timely. It got us through some rough times. Again, I’d like to thank the government and the Ministers responsible for getting that on the go and for the federal government, too, for the partnership that enabled us to get some money and some projects moving forward and completed. I think just perfect timing for us. Hopefully we’ve seen the end of the rough economic times and we can continue to move the Territory forward.

There’s just one that, while I’ve got the floor, has been in some cases a lack of decisions being made by this government and it looks like we’re leaving a lot of the hard choices and decisions to the next government. I think we have to do everything in our power while we’re here to make some of those decisions. It would be nice if some of those decisions got to us. They haven’t and I talked again about the Program Review Office and my disappointment that in three years we’ve really only got to make a decision on one thing. That’s not very good.

Also, streamlining government operations at improving effectiveness and efficiencies. We just haven’t done that in a meaningful way. I don’t believe that’s been done. We have to do a better job in that.

For the most part I think the future looks very bright for the Northwest Territories. There’s going to be a difficult period of time here, probably the next three or four years, financially, where I think managing our spending and capping expenditure growth is going to be key to getting us through the next few years. I think down the road the future does look

very bright for us. I know there’s some austerity measures that have been enacted by the government that are going to help get us there, but I’d just like to see more decisions arriving at the table of the Regular Members so that we can be a part of that decision-making process. On the hard decisions anyway.

I want to thank the Finance Minister and the government for their work in putting forward the budget for 2011-2012.