Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to also join my colleagues on this theme day today on population growth initiatives.

As I mentioned earlier this week, we do have to do a lot of things different to try to get our people to stay here in the North. One of the things that we really need to do is find a way to keep our cost of living down in the territory. As any Northerner knows, the cost of living here in the North is very great, and I believe that’s why a lot of people from the South just come up here to work and fly back every two weeks.

Over the last week I believe some of the mining companies have made some positive changes as they work with the government to find ways to encourage people to stay here in the North, to work

here and live here in the North as they work in the diamond mines.

We also have other opportunities that this government could partake of, and that’s filling a lot of the positions that need to be filled here in the Northwest Territories. We have a lot of people that are going to university and college down south. We have to encourage those people to come back, work in the summers, make sure they’re very familiar with the positions they want to take on once they graduate, and ensure that they know that those positions are available to them once they do graduate university or college.

As I mentioned earlier this week, we also have to increase our infrastructure in a lot of the communities. Yes, most of the regional centres do have facilities for recreation, yet in the small communities it’s very challenging. I know we do have the infrastructure funding available to communities, but I believe that over the next couple of years we have to increase those funds to ensure that communities can build what they need in the communities to attract Northerners and the people to come and work in the communities. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.