Thank you, Madam Chair. I thank the staff for coming in and listening to all the concerns that Members have today. I do understand that under the certain fiscal restraints, you do the best job that you can throughout the Northwest Territories. Looking at our list of work that needs to be done in the regions and small communities. Even here in Yellowknife with a lot of issues that are facing.

I guess I just want to begin with, up in Inuvik we have a pretty bad situation that we’re facing in terms of infrastructure, kind of going along the same lines as possibly a disaster like what happened in Nahanni Butte and all the infrastructure that had occurred over the summer with the devastating floods that happened there. Up in Inuvik we have a gas situation in which we were

told that the community has less than a year left on natural gas. As some results that came out in the news, Inuvik Gas started running on some synthetic gas, some incidents happened, and as a result for the last two weeks to a month, I’m not sure, they’ve been doing tests around the community, meaning that the community had to go back on natural gas and use up some of its resources in that amount of time, and then when it was safe, certain units, certain areas of the community went back on synthetic gas. The main concern is that in a time when they could have been using synthetic gas they’re using some of our resources from our inventory that’s already been there. We were told before, that was longer. We were told two years, a year and a half. Now we’re down to a year. Now this year we’re not even sure what can happen. In terms of the synthetic gas being used in the community on all the units, which 85 percent of our residents are on natural gas as well as a bunch of business owners, depending on the load demands and if we have any outages in the community, anything like that that might use up some more of our fuel, and in terms of when it does get a lot colder, the synthetic gas, the effectiveness and efficiency of that fuel being able to work efficiently in the homes or in the community without having a heat trace on the houses or insulating the pipes, that can result in a lot of damaged infrastructure in the community. Whether I know a lot of our government buildings are going on synthetic gas to continue the natural gas inventory for the community, but should that happen during this winter when our natural gas, if it should happen to run out and if the synthetic gas is not working efficiently, there’s going to be a lot of buildings that can result in long-term damage. That’s just the scenario that I want to put out there and something that as I listen to concerns from the Members here in the House, that’s something that we need to take into sight as we move forward and possibly look at the funding that’s going into infrastructure.

Another big project that kind of concerned me, and I know concerned some of our contractors back home, was the Inuvik-Tuk highway. I was very glad to hear a lot of support from Members on this side of the House in terms of the Inuvik-Tuk highway being a priority for this 17th Legislative Assembly

and moving forward that should we make a decision when our reports come in that we can start building as soon as possible so that we can get work in Inuvik, we don’t lose months on the building season, and that project, should the Assembly go ahead and approve it, that we can get started right away. I know that’s a concern for Members of our region and my community as well.

Some highlights: I’m really glad to see the funding in terms of deferred maintenance. I know it’s a big list there but we’re putting a dent in it with this money that’s getting spent in there and looking at

some of our infrastructure that really needs the help.

Along those lines we do have some Aurora College units in Inuvik that needed some upgrades and they’re very needed when it comes to families from out of Inuvik coming into the community to attend Aurora College. To put them into a home that’s not very up to code is a concern. We want to have healthy families so they can be educated and become part of society.

Another concern was with devolution. It’s been a discussion that I’ve had ongoing with various members of a bunch of different communities, really, and making sure that this government does have proper infrastructure, whether it’s government building space, housing, so that when we do decentralize a lot of these departments or jobs to the communities and regions, that we have infrastructure in place so that we can start doing the jobs. There’s no excuse to have more jobs here in Yellowknife when today you’ve heard around the table that we need the infrastructure in the communities so that when we do start decentralization, moving jobs and departments into the communities, that it wasn’t overlooked and we discussed it ahead of time. We should definitely be putting a plan in place so that when those jobs do come, that our communities do benefit.

All the other concerns were a lot of concerns that were brought and raised by other Members, but I just wanted to raise and reiterate some of those.