Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think it’s been fairly clear in terms of the path that is before us, at least for the past couple of weeks that we’ve been here. It’s fairly clear that we’re challenged with limitations and fiscal resources. At the same time we’re challenged with continuing to deliver programs and services and links that are vital to ensuring that our citizens and residents of the Northwest Territories enjoy their lifestyle here in the North, and ensuring that they bring up their families and ensuring that we have a future for all of us to share this part of Canada. It’s been very eye-opening for the past couple of weeks in terms of the challenges that are before us.

At the same time there are still needs and wants that our communities bring up periodically. Quite often we hear that there needs to be infrastructure at least brought to the communities in terms of schools, roads and so forth. There are still aspirations of local communities to ensure that there are programs and services at the same time delivered to communities and residents. There are still needs of communities that are not really reflected in this whole initiative at this time. I realize that.

What is very interesting for me, at least from my perspective, is that some common themes I’ve heard from all of us thus far is that there is a need because we’re challenged with delivering the programs and services to our residents at the same time we’re challenged with creating new capital infrastructure projects. We need to try to make less; we need to do more with less resources at this time. Some common themes that I’ve been hearing is that we need to integrate. Perhaps we need to decentralize, or else we need to maybe look at better cooperation with communities and local governments, or regional governments and partnerships. Those are a few signals that I’ve been seeing thus far.

I like what I’m hearing. I think we’ve started off at the gates where we kind of took off and I see some positive signals that we’re undertaking. My hope and sense of optimism at this point is that all is not lost in terms of the communities that still aspire to get the services that they want. For example, in Kakisa they’re still very interested in a central heating system so that they have an alternative to the fossil fuels that they burn at this point. In Enterprise there’s still a need for them to realize their wish to see a school established in their community. On the reserve in Hay River – K’atlodeeche – they still aspire to create services for their youth. My hope is that those wishes of the communities will not be lost in the shuffle, that somehow governments and departments will ensure that in the spirit of trying to work with everybody that people will listen. At the same time, try to be creative and work with communities and local leaders, residents, to ensure that, yes, we are challenged with finding the funds that perhaps are non-existent at this time, but ensuring that we could perhaps make things possible by realizing the aspirations of communities by working together.