Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would agree with the Member. We definitely don’t have enough money to throw around, but let me go through the lists.

You made a comment about the subsidy, but we need to do more to reduce reliance. Within the fiscal ability that we have available to us, we are doing a significant amount of work. It varies. Like biomass, retrofits, upgrades. We’re looking at a very positive geothermal opportunity. We’ve put in the biggest solar array in this part of the country in Simpson. We are looking at our hydro opportunities, both to the north around Deline as well as the North and South Slave. We are funding and keeping programs going as an incentive to people to make those transitions to more energy-efficient types of appliances and such. We are putting money to work that we have available, recognizing that we could spend more if we had it. Yes, we could.

No money for midwifery. The Minister has indicated that the report has come out, but we’ve laid out the budget here where we’re talking about maintaining and protecting the programs and services we have and the ability to try to constrain the growth of governments to address some of the broader issues of being fiscally responsible and to deal with some of the things, for example, mentioned by the Member for Hay River North about the concurbent spending. So we’re trying to do that to address our issues.

Would midwifery be nice? Yes, it would be, but we have the capacity to birth children or babies in the North. It could be improved upon, but it’s one of the ones that are an issue of choice. It’s a choice that we have to make, one of the hard choices we make in this government, but the Minister of Health will be speaking on that going forward.

The sport hunter outfitters, when can they hunt? We are doing a significant amount of work and we have been over winter, spring, summer and fall. They were going to pull all that information together. Indications are that the Bathurst is looking positive. How positive? We’re not sure. The Ahiak herd we think will give us some room to move. As well, we have the Bluenose-East numbers that are being looked at and there are possibilities there as well. When those numbers come in, we will look at it collectively with all the folks that we need to that should be engaged in this, as well as this Assembly, to see what the sacrifice and the sacrifice of Northerners have done in terms of helping the numbers improve.

The Tuk-Inuvik highway, I’ll note the Member’s concerns and we responded to yourself, Mr. Chair, and I’ll just be reiterating that to the Member.

Family violence, the 19 recommendations that the one position is nice but it’s not enough. Once again it’s a question of choices. When the Minister of Justice is before this House, we’ll be able to have a detailed discussion about the other 18 and where they fit and what timelines might be.

The same with the issue of early childhood development. It could move faster. You want to put more money into it. Those are, once again, all laudable programs, but with the plan we have laid out, some of those program initiatives are not there.

The need for new revenue, the Member and I would have to agree to disagree. It’s our opinion, as I indicated in the House, that we’re not planning to come forward with new taxes. Our corporate tax now has us in the middle of the tax with other jurisdictions in terms of tax rates. There is a national push to try to bring our tax rates down to 10 percent. In some cases, if you want to go lower, there’s a point where you’re racing to the bottom. We’ve held fast over the last couple of years. We haven’t touched it. So there’s no plan on our part to come forward with any kind of corporate tax

increase. We are definitely looking into other revenue streams, but at this point, given all the other cost pressures like general rate application and such and forced growth on all our constituencies and communities, a type of new tax could be onerous.

The issue of evaluation framework, we agree that we have to do a better job at measuring what we do and look at outcomes and be able to justify more specifically, not just with a compelling narrative, but with facts, figures and numbers on the work that we do and the money that we spend. Thank you.