Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just want to make a comment here to the regional operations. I spoke to the people in my region and they’re very, very happy that the regional operations for the overall management and the single window services centres are very good. I think they really were happy that we are continuing support and expanding in my region. They were quite happy with this. I think they said this is probably the best thing since sliced bread here. The people are happy and the people could have operations done in their own language, so this was good. Whoever thought about this idea, I mean, they should be getting the Premier’s Award on this one here. I just wanted to say that, Mr. Chair, that the people were quite happy with it.
The other issue I want to talk about is, the federal government is making a 10 percent cut right across the board with the band funding support and tribal council funding support, and it’s going to affect the Northwest Territories band office. I just, again, came from the Sahtu Dene Council meeting where this was brought up. The implementation of these cuts will take effect April 1, 2014.
I wanted to just raise it with the Premier here. Hopefully, we’ve got about a year’s grace time before the implementation takes effect. We should start looking at this issue, because if nothing gets done about it, closing some of the band council offices is a real possibility. Lutselk'e, Tsiigehtchic, Colville Lake, Tulita, they’re going to severely be hit by federal government cuts. There’s a formula that doesn’t quite work in our favour in the Northwest Territories and somehow we’ve got to let the Minister of Indian and Northern Affairs, Aboriginal Affairs, the Minister know, or the Prime Minister know that this formula needs to be changed, and changed quickly, because I’ve seen the numbers
and we can’t operate our bands on $50,000 or $90,000. It’s like having those kinds of drastic cuts.
I’m looking forward to the Premier having some discussion. Not right now, but looking at this issue very seriously and seeing if the GNWT could help our band governments, the band offices deal with the federal government cuts and see if they could persuade the federal government to reconsider the special type of funding we get in the Northwest Territories. I wanted to raise that to the Premier under this page here.