Thank you, Madam Chair. This budget is entirely in keeping with the plan we laid out at the start of the 17th Assembly, and I think we collectively should recognize how much work we’ve done to get to the point where we could actually put in an extra $50 million a year over the next two years, the last two years of this government, to do a number of additional projects and deal with opportunities that occur like the Tuk-Inuvik highway where there is $200 million, basically for us 30 cent dollars, and the opportunity to put in a piece of much needed infrastructure in the part of the territory that has no roads. I don’t know the cumulative amount of money we spent on Highway No. 3, but I can well remember sitting in this Assembly where the majority of the money in the capital plan went to, in fact, paving Highway No. 3 and doing all the work. Back then it was well over $100 million worth of major investments that we made as a government for quite some time and where there were a lot of other unmet needs.

Over time we have to make decisions. We have to pay attention to the whole territory. When you look at education, once again over time we had

extensive discussion in this Assembly about the amount of money we are spending on schools in Inuvik, for example. We have built schools in Tulita, Fort Good Hope, Ndilo and Inuvik in the last few years. This particular budget, at this point in time, doesn’t have significant amounts of money for education, but if you take a long-term look at our investments, we have been paying, I think, very good attention to all those critical areas.

The issue of slowing down the Tuk-Inuvik highway will just drive up the cost of the project as we stretch it out over time, but I think it makes eminent good sense for us to try and maximize the economic benefit of $300 million by maximizing northern investment, northern employment, northern business involvement, and we are doing that.

It’s unfortunate that the Member has such low regard for this budget. I, on the other hand, as the Minister bringing it forward, think we have, once again, done a good job trying to incorporate all the concerns we have heard around the country and the balance of paying attention to the whole North and looking at trying to make a relatively modest amount of money go a very long way. We look forward to the discussion in the coming days with the Member. Thank you.