Thank you, Madam Chair. I’m just going to follow through the Minister’s comments here to focus my remarks. One percent over 2012-2013 in the departmental budget, obviously some serious work has been done here and I appreciate that.

I notice there is a good recognition of the need to reduce energy costs and greenhouse gas emissions, but I think there is, overall, insufficient effort and expenditures at addressing that priority.

The one thing that I think is an opportunity is that we need to work with our business and industry partners towards renewable energy projects that serve both industry needs and communities. I think the resource extraction in this group, for example,

should be required to participate in this way through development conditions.

On the Business Incentive Policy monitoring office moving to Hay River, and this is in direct response to the Assembly wanting to see some decentralization, I would say this is moving generally in the right direction, but we’re expecting that it be done in a sound way with analysis. Committee has done some analysis. I know Members have looked into this. The South Slave actually has the highest proportion of government jobs per capita of any of our regions, something around 13 percent. Next, not surprisingly, is the North Slave. In substantial contrast, the Tlicho are down 7 percent. The Sahtu and Beaufort-Delta are at 11 percent. I think we do generally support decentralization and who could fight decentralization in their own area or community? I wouldn’t expect that. We are expecting that the government will do it in recognition of what the current situation is and strive for some equity. This Minister is obviously trying to respond and I’d ask that he start to broaden his considerations to actually achieve what we’re, I think, all looking for.

The socio-economic agreements, there’s been some comments on those already. Obviously the good ones that have teeth are the ones that are successful; the ones that don’t are not. I’m happy to see the interest in the Prairie Creek SEA doing the surveys, but I’m perplexed as to why the communities are not being included in the surveys. They’re focused on site. Typically our socio-economic agreements are meant to ensure benefits are grounded in our communities and distributed. Maybe that was just an oversight.

Obviously there’s much activity in the Sahtu in relation to the oil play there, and I’m wondering how we’re measuring greenhouse gases in all that activity.

Just some general comments. With respect to the BIP again, we’ve looked at this many times. It seems like every Assembly does. I still see challenges there. I’m hearing from constituents that there are still challenges there. Somehow these large companies that are based far away are getting BIP. It’s not an even playing field. As much as we have looked at this and agonized, we’re not there yet.

Some general comments on the economy. Often we tend to focus solely on the market economy. We have three economies and that’s the smallest one of the three. We have a domestic economy, which is sort of beneath the dollars. It’s not a monetary economy and it’s much bigger than our market economy. Below that is the natural economy, the incredible services that nature provides in the way of providing clean resources for our benefit and so on, and the ability to take bad stuff and turn it back into good stuff. Those are invaluable services so it’s

even better than our domestic economy. I think we need to, when we’re coming up with a general plan, be recognizing all three of those and making sure that our actions serve all three.

I didn’t see much on agriculture here. I know the Minister is on that file. I think Northerners are waking up to the incredible opportunities here, and I know Hay River is a real lead there, but many communities are getting involved and Hay River is playing a good leadership role.

Fisheries, certainly. I’m wondering if perhaps we’ll get into details on how we can help with that situation at the fish processing plant in Hay River. Perhaps something in Yellowknife, some sort of support.

Of course, the arts. I think the arts we’ve generally increased support in that direction for the last four or five years, but I’m not sure we’re there yet. The arts are demonstrated more and more to be a real opportunity and a real plus to economic development, and an often unrealized opportunity.

I spoke earlier today on fracking. I know the Minister was listening. There are lots of issues that are going to require expertise from this department in order to respond responsibly. That’s always a concern.

That’s all I have for general comments.