Thank you, Mr. Chair. My comments are similar to some of my colleagues who have spoken, so I won’t stay too long on them.

Mr. Chair, the Minister’s department, one of the main objectives, I believe, is to protect the consumers in our communities. I was back in Tulita and it was very disturbing to me to do business in the Northern Store and they us their LINK card in the Northern Store. If you don’t really know the complexity of the LINK card and English is your second language – and these older people just use the LINK card to get in and out of the store or check their account – the Northern Store is robbing you without a mask because of the amount of money to use your LINK card. They charge you to check it, they charge you to take money out, they charge you to pay your bill. That is unreal what the elders are paying. The Northern Store is smiling and saying, have a good day; I guess they’re going to have a good day. They’re getting a lot of money from the people. We need some understanding with the Northern Store and the use of the LINK card.

Mr. Minister, the community is being literally financially robbed by the Northern Store. You wouldn’t accept this in any other community. The community got so mad that it bought its own bank machine. The Northern Store is the only game in town using this system and they’ve got everybody by the scruff of the neck. This is our only store and you use our LINK card, use our system.

I want to ask the Minister and the staff, hopefully they will look at this situation in the small communities. This is a private industry, a private service. In our small communities we only have one store. Some have two stores, the Co-op. This is very serious for us in our communities, especially now where Tulita, Good Hope, Norman Wells is going to be very busy because of the oil and gas activities that are happening there right now. People are spending money. Money is floating around in those communities. I want to ask the Minister what type of initiatives he can look at on financial literacy, on handling these types of financial transactions with the LINK card and how they can educate the people. Like I said, a lot of my people in Tulita are probably about 85, Good Hope, older, they speak their own language. So they don’t really know much about financial stuff that’s attached to those LINK cards.

I want to ask the Minister also, with the ground ambulance, you know that Tulita and Norman Wells are going to be busy with oil and gas. Last year it

was estimated just over $70 million being spent, close to $80 million, lots of activity there. I know these ground ambulances are set for all-weather roads, but now it’s getting busier between Tulita and Norman Wells, Tulita and Wrigley, and different communities and people have been telling me they’ve been having close calls. Thank God, knock on wood there’s no serious accident. We need to ramp that up and say what type of services can we expect. Right now we don’t know. If you call somebody right now that’s on the winter road that will go and help that person, you will need the goodness of people’s heart to jump in the pickup and go on the highway. There’s no set ambulance or RCMP or health. Everybody really hasn’t been coordinated that much on the ground ambulance.

I want to ask the Minister throughout the page by page what type of coordination is he working with his colleagues on the drinking water quality, Every department does their own thing. In Fort Good Hope this came up. MACA’s doing one, Health is doing one, ENR is doing one. Everybody’s doing their own part on ensuring that the water is safe, the testing is proper and that they are properly testing for the chemicals. They don’t do all the testing. Is the Minister going to come forward with some kind of coordinated process? This is what we’re doing with all the departments, just like they had the social programs coordinating committee, so they cannot coordinate what everybody else is doing.

Ms. Bisaro talked about the human capacity and I think MACA is doing a good job in that area. The Minister got a smile out of me here. I want to thank you. The School of Community Government is doing very good. I’ve seen people in my communities and regions who have taken this and they said they’re doing well. I want to thank the Minister for that and I could continue to support you on this initiative.

I want to ask the Minister on the New Deal in the communities. Are you helping the communities implement the New Deal and to fully implement it to its capacity on the New Deal? I know the Minister of housing talked about the IAB lots. I know MACA is involved with the federal IAB lots. There have been some people in my region that have been saying that this is Indian Affairs’ lot, why is MACA taking over? Who gave them authority? It becomes a collective property issue of rent and who pays the taxes and all that stuff. Some people still firmly believe that these lots that were given to them by the band, that these are their lots. Why is the territorial government, through MACA, taking these lots away from them? There is some confusion there, some difficulty. In and around Good Hope especially. That’s where a lot of people still say that these lots belong to them and that they are band lots, so to speak. I guess that’s some work that we have to do.

I’ve supported and continue to support the initiatives with the youth, the different games that they play, and the ones that are getting some good airtime now are the traditional games in our small communities. Especially with the hand games that are becoming more and more popular amongst other traditional games in the Northwest Territories. I’m starting to see that. I want to see how we can continue to support the traditional games.

Ms. Bisaro talked about the voluntary sector and their importance to our communities. We certainly appreciate the voluntary sector for coming out. Be it the Arctic Winter Games or any kind of games, you see in the regions all the volunteers that come out to support the children in the community. I guess I want to see continued strength in those areas.

The Municipal and Community Affairs do a lot of funding to the communities. I think the majority of their funding goes directly to the communities. I wish other departments would follow your lead so they could give the powers to the community. That’s how it should be, with the support of the departments to the communities.

I just want to say that I appreciate that process there and I will have other questions for the Minister as we go through page by page.