Madam Speaker, we have undertaken consultation. This is now my sixth budget as Finance Minister. In the last
government, in fact, we did consultation, but it was based on Yellowknife. We’ve gone around the territory now to talk about the budget and budget consultation. As I pointed out in the communities, as well, there’s a $1.6 billion budget we are talking about. The resource revenue piece is $45 million. It’s a significant issue, but it wasn’t the only issue by far in terms of sheer quantum and we had ranging discussions about other things, about the future of the Northwest Territories, things we need to do to build our economic base… Some of the vision was needed as a territory to in fact move forward. We didn’t ignore the advice.
There was overwhelming support for the Heritage Fund, there was overwhelming support for not putting that money into programs and services, there was overwhelming support to put money into the Heritage Fund, infrastructure and doing debt repayment. All three of those things we are doing.
So the Member’s absolute statements are wrong and we intend to go back out next year. I think it’s a very good investment of dollars and there is a price for democracy. I’m willing, as Finance Minister, to go community to community every year to talk to the people and have that discussion, and there was a wide range of opinion about the Heritage Fund. At the end of the day, the government has to look at that input, plus all these other factors before us, these financial variables, the $350 million Stanton Hospital, the drop in revenues, the significant demand-driven supplementary appropriations, and we have to look at how we manage all of those and we’ve done that. Thank you.