Thank you, Madam Chair. I just have a couple of comments at the outset. I want to state my unreserved approval for a focus on deferred maintenance. I know PWS is the department that pretty much has the Deferred Maintenance Program and we’ve certainly expanded that program over the last several years. I think it’s very definitely the way to go and I certainly support the focus that we’ve put on deferred maintenance in all of our areas.

I do wish to speak to the suggestion by Mr. Bromley about providing arts space in new GNWT buildings. I don’t believe his suggestion was earmarked specifically for this particular Yellowknife building and I guess what I would like to say is that I think there’s a huge opportunity for us to encourage arts.

Any number of times we will hear that arts is part of our economic development as tourism. Arts tourism is certainly an area in which we can expand where we can develop our community. I would like to see, as opposed to simply referring this issue to the Department of Education, Culture and Employment, I think this is an issue which ought to be looked at by Cabinet in terms of developing a policy. I’m not thinking about a retail space.

I know Mr. Hawkins was referencing, I think, free space for retail. That’s not, I think, what we need. I think what we need is a space where artists can develop, where artists certainly can display works and even if it happens to be that 1 percent of the space in the building is for artists to display their work, not for sale but simply to display them so that tourists come into any community, they want to see what local artists have to show them. If there is no space where they can be displayed, then people have no idea what is available.

So I’d like to ask the Minister if he would consider expanding his view of this particular issue and look at developing a policy that would consider, and there would then be some clear definition of what we mean by art space. At the moment it’s pretty much up to each individual’s interpretation, but if we can develop a policy, then that would be something where it would apply to all newly built buildings in the GNWT, whether it be 1 percent or 10 percent or 100 percent, but there is a statement that we will provide space for the arts and this policy would determine what kind of space that would be.

To Mr. Hawkins’ statement that we’re not going to get free space given away, well, I think the artist-run community centre happened to have free space for a number of months and there are opportunities for organizations, through philanthropy, to be given a space where they can do things, like, for their organization. They certainly had meetings there, they displayed works there, they certainly had events there, any number of events and I think it was a real boost, a real shot in the arm for the arts community not just in Yellowknife but throughout the Territories. Because any artists that came from any other community came through the artist-run community centre and got some sort of a boost from it, even just artists being able to interact from one person to another.

So I would like to ask the Minister again – I’m rambling on here a bit – if he would consider expanding this particular idea, taking it to Cabinet for the development of a policy that would apply to all newly built GNWT buildings in the future. Thank you.