Mr. Chair, I want to add my few comments to the department. I do want to say the maintainer’s position was advertised and filled by a local person in Tulita. I’m very pleased with this program and the other communities that do have it. It’s something that we should continue to look at to expand in other communities. It’s a valuable program. I do want to thank the department for going ahead with this and filling these positions as quickly as possible.

As my colleague Mr. Beaulieu indicated, that the Apprenticeship Program is something that’s very valuable in our small communities and that there is certainly room for more. So I look forward to the department’s plans to see where we’re going to continue to expand and support our young people to get into the trades. As we know, there is a lack of qualified skilled tradespeople in the North and it’s needed so much in our communities, so I continue to support the Apprenticeship Program under the leadership of this department here and certainly look forward to expanding it more.

I do want to talk about the Deferred Maintenance Program. One of the goals is that our department building remain safe and reliable and that the amount of dollars that are going into the Deferred Maintenance Program and also through the energy management initiatives under the Capital Assets Retrofit Fund here. I do want to say that our infrastructure is aging and some of our buildings in and around the Sahtu fall into that category. I make note, for example, in Tulita we have a building that is being used right now by DPW. It’s called the trades shop. It’s quite old and needs to be demolished and a new one needs to be put up. I noted that the Minister has made some notes on this one here and I look forward to seeing where that trade shop would be replaced as quickly as possible, Mr. Chair.

I do want to say the community of Deline is quite pleased with the new aviation fuel tank at the airport. I think there’s quite a bit of interest and that employed a few people at the site similar to the tanks that we received in Fort Good Hope.

Mr. Chair, I wanted to ask if the Minister would make a few comments somewhere in the detailed budget on the Tulita petroleum division office there. The old building there in Tulita needs to be replaced as quickly as possible and I hope that the Minister would show where in the books that this is going to happen. Under the same department of petroleum products, the community resupply, the Bear Lake ice crossing basically increased its weight capacity to 55,000 kilograms. This was a concern for people in Deline, that their fuel might be getting over there late because of the warm weather and the weight of the ice crossing.

Hopefully, there are longer discussions, I guess, long-term views as to how we could rectify this type of concern.

I wanted to add my support to the bandwidth services in our small communities. Education is asking for them. Health is asking for them. Especially with the high cost of health electronic operations now make it more efficient, I could say, in terms of getting the information to the doctors in the larger centres of Yellowknife or Inuvik and we can use the video monitoring and the electronic health records and all that good stuff that goes on with today’s technology. Because, you know, the cost of flying people out for medevacs, certainly that’s still needed, but sometimes it’s good to have someone just go to the health centres and be hooked up to that type of operation so they can get checked out through that avenue. I’ll continue to advocate for the health centres, especially in our smaller communities where doctors and nurses are not visiting them as much as we want them to visit those centres.

I want to ask the Minister some detail later on in terms of the health centre in Norman Wells and the long-term care facility, the plan that we have given our support to have a long-term care facility in the Sahtu and the planning that would go to make that a reality. I appreciate the support from this House and from Cabinet to bring this to fruition. At the same time, I understand that the community health centre is also in the plans. It is desperately needed. It has been one of the priorities of the health board as one health centre that is sort of busting at the seams. I have been in that health centre. It is really cramming and replaces that we have some eye care services or the dental health. It is not adequate. However, I guess today it will do to have our services. We have to put up with some of the overcrowding in that facility. I understand that is in the planning stages. Mr. Chairman, I have wanted to say that to continue to work with the department to see how some of these essential services are being looked after in our small communities. I think the department is being pretty good in working with our small communities. Mahsi cho.