The Member’s addressed that we’ve had some discussion about the issue of how committed are we to decentralization. It’s been a long running concern and interest of, I think, every Member outside of Yellowknife. The Chair and myself have been here the longest, and we’ve had some modest success over the years but not a lot. So this is probably the most political support there’s been for decentralization tied to devolution.

I know the Member for Hay River North would appreciate a little bit of background of back in 1967 when the plane came north with the Commissioner for the first time and how long we’ve been working towards this. We are committed. There’s a significant number of small community MLAs on Cabinet, and we are all serving at the pleasure of this august body. It is something I know as Finance Minister I’m definitely interested in, and we will be having to demonstrate that to you as we go forward here once we sign the Devolution Agreement.

We can’t just go willy-nilly. The work has been done initially. There have been community surveys. There are some communities that are decentralization ready: Hay River, Inuvik, Fort Smith – probably in that order – Simpson to a lesser degree. Work has to be done in other larger centres like Norman Wells. The smaller communities, we’re looking at other opportunities to put government jobs in there, like those government service officers, where we can put positions on the ground to assist people. We’re trying to pay attention to all the communities, recognizing that the centre does seem to grow.