Thanks, Mr. Chair, and thanks to my colleagues for your indulgence in letting me finish off my list.

I wanted to just say that at the outset I think the Minister misunderstood what I was saying about the hydro. I know that the business case that we did before was for a different project. I think my concern is that we haven’t done preliminary analysis to determine that there’s a valid reason to go ahead with a detailed business case. The term throwing good money after bad kind of comes to my mind. I just wanted to get that out of the way.

My other point that I want to make on the hydro is that I’m fine with connecting up the transmission lines or the systems that we have within the North. I’m very skeptical about being able to make money by connecting to the South. That’s my main concern there.

I’d like to just say, that in terms of the budget and the increase in the budget due to devolution, I welcome devolution and I want to welcome our new employees. I appreciate that we have budgeted for a contingency in the money that we’re getting from the federal government to deal with devolution. I

think it’s about $9 million, and I appreciate that the government has been prudent in planning for devolution. I would hope that that $9 million is going to be used only for devolution activities and that we’re not going to think of it as a bit of a $9 million slush fund, so when we determine that we need extra money in a particular area because we didn’t plan – and plans are always fluid – that we didn’t plan exactly and we need a little bit more money, that we have it there.

To the Minister’s concept of increasing the population, absolutely, I agree with that concept. It is one of the things that has affected us over the three, four, five years. As our population has gone down, obviously our revenues have gone down, and it is something that we need to seriously take a look at. I’m concerned about the details, and I know the Minister has mentioned a number of things, but they’re ideas at the moment. There’s no detail behind them. I think, in general, that it’s going to take wide-ranging, across-government changes for us to implement some of the things that have been referenced in terms of keeping people here, bringing students back, keeping people here, that sort of thing. I’ve heard, unfortunately, too many stories of students who have finished their schooling. One example is somebody who graduated as a doctor tried to get a job in the Territories and just couldn’t, couldn’t, couldn’t, waited, waited, waited, and finally took a job in the South and is not coming home. They wanted to come home and wanted to go to a community outside of Yellowknife. Why couldn’t we make this happen? In my mind, some of the things that we need to change many of the departments, not just Human Resources but I think all across departments we have a problem encouraging and getting our people to come back to the North.

I am concerned about the impact of the reallocation of internal funds within Education for junior kindergarten. I appreciate the Minister’s answer to my written question. He said it’s no more than a 1.2 percent reduction for any board. But still, you know, it’s going to have an impact on boards and boards are going to be receiving this pretty much in the middle of their planning cycle, so it’s not going to be easy for them to adjust. The Minister of Education has said that this was done in consultation with the boards, but that’s not what I’m hearing. I’m hearing that the boards have basically been told that this is what’s going to be happening, that the boards and their superintendents have not really had an opportunity to provide input into whether or not this is a good idea.

The other thing that I have to mention, and it was pointed out to me actually after the budget address by somebody at the reception, in this whole budget there is no new money for education. We consistently state that education is extremely important, we need to educate our people, we need

to get them to graduate, we need them to have skills in order to get jobs and be contributing members to our society, and yet we’re not putting any money into the education budget.

Also on education, the budget address mentions a review of adult education and a review of the college. We have been hearing about this for a very long time and I think, actually, there was a review that was done a couple of years ago. I’m quite skeptical about are we really going to review adult education, or is this just hot air in the wind? I don’t believe we heard any results from the review that presumably happened a couple of years ago.

A couple of other comments. I think the budget commented about the need for efficient government and I guess I challenge the Minister to tell me what efficiency we have achieved over the last year. How has this government become more efficient over the last year? We have a program review office, which we haven’t heard much of in the last little while, and what has that program review office done in terms of efficiencies? Have we gained any savings? Have we made ourselves more efficient and more responsive to our residents?

The other problem that I have is that we say we want to be more efficient, we say that we are being more efficient and yet our budget increases every year. I know we have lots of initiatives, but if we really are being more efficient, I wouldn’t think, for instance, that we would have cost overruns every year as we do.

To the Minister’s suggestion of discussing the process at Caucus, I think that’s a very valid suggestion. I know it was done once before, but as I sit here listening to Members and the Minister responding back, it seems to me that we either need better explanations either from Regular Members to Cabinet or from Cabinet to Regular Members, or we need better communication of what each side is saying. There seems to be a disconnect in what I hear versus what the Cabinet thinks they’re telling me and what Cabinet hears versus what they think I’m telling them. So, we seem to have a communication problem. We seem to have an understanding problem. We seem to have a reporting problem to a certain extent. Committees report to Regular Members; Ministers report to Cabinet, and I just don’t think we end up on the same page although we may have all heard the same thing. I think it would be a good idea for us to discuss process.

One of the things perhaps, although this seems a bit strange, but I’m going to say that I think we need to get the government’s plans in detail sooner so that we, as Regular Members, can better understand what actions the government is proposing. I know we certainly get an awful lot of information when we discuss business plans. We discuss a lot of things, but there are often

somewhat visionary statements and I think the government assumes that we know the detail and we wait for the detail and don’t get it. Then when we do get the detail it’s like, well, you never told us about this and the government thinks that probably they have. So, it goes back to my concern about lack of understanding, communication and so on. It’s a long way of saying that I think we need to discuss the process and try to find a better way to do this.

That’s all I have, Mr. Chair. I do want to say to the Minister of Finance that this budget isn’t all bad. I’ve asked a lot of questions, but again I think it’s because there are a lot of things that I maybe don’t have a good explanation for. Certainly, we can agree to disagree, but this is not a bad budget. Thanks, Mr. Chair.