Thank you, Mr. Speaker. May I dare say that occasionally Members on this side of the House have a really good idea, and there are many small things in our communities that this government could fund, which would make a huge difference, but we can’t be told no, we have no money, and if you do want that money, find out where you can cut something. We do not have the resources at our disposal to identify where those funds are.
Let me just give you a couple of examples. In Hay River, recently in just talking with people, the youth centre needs a piece of land, the youth treatment in a seed group that wants it going, we have people who just need shelter at nights in existing accommodation, we have a soup kitchen that needs a container to store the extra stuff donated to them. These are small things, but these harness the passion and volunteerism of people in the community that make a huge difference. The Persons with Disabilities Council was just told in Hay River no, you can’t have an increase from your $33,000 a year because we don’t have any money. So you go out and fundraise harder. You know, this is a difficult message to deliver for us.
Could I ask the Premier is there any possibility that he could go to his deputies and go to his Ministers and go to his departments and say could they identify some place, some savings within the departments that are low impact, that are not going to upset the progress of government that could come up with some kind of fund that would allow us to take some wins back to our communities on behalf of our constituents for some low budget stuff? I’m talking about things under $50,000 that in smaller communities would have a huge impact, but we don’t have access to anything like that. I’m not asking to sit around with a multi-million dollar capital budget and we’re going to divvy it up from this side of the House. I’m talking about some small
wins or some small things for some communities and regions outside of Yellowknife. Thank you.