Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In my opening statement to my budget on Friday I stated a couple of programs that we are expanding to Inuvik and Fort Simpson, Healthy Children Initiatives.
Mr. Speaker, I think everybody here knows how the budget process works. A major initiative such as this will require significant funding and the timing issue... Their report came out after we went through the business plan review. The Members had a chance to have a look at this budget in January and the Members are aware that it was not part of that budget.
Mr. Speaker, I think it’s really important for us to state and I’d like to state that we have, in every way possible, worked to respond favourably to the report. We have accepted 61 out of 73 recommendations, and even the 10 that we are not able to accept as it is written, we explain in detail why that is so. So I can tell the Member that we are committed to providing the substantiation as a department to look at these additional funding initiatives in the next business cycle, but given our fiscal pressure, unless we take out something that’s already in the budget it would not be possible for us to add a new program, to add an Early Childhood Intervention Program in every community in this budget. Thank you.