Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In the budget address the Minister of Finance states that the most effective way we can grow our revenues is to grow our economy and our population. He also states that over the next five years he wants to grow the NWT population by 2,000 people.

I also agree that our economy does need to grow and develop, but I also have a suggestion here that maybe over the next five years we invest that into the people of the Northwest Territories by investing in their education and training in the small communities and the regions where a lot of the economic things are happening. Right now we’re not meeting the economic agreements with our northern workforce in some of the diamond industry as well as the oil and gas, and this is an opportunity for the next five years to train our northern residents so that they become taxpayers and we get some of those tax revenues back. Also, there’s an opportunity that some of these guys will have to go off social assistance, so we will be saving some money there that can go into other areas to the people who do really need it. It will also reduce poverty because, obviously, healthy people, educated people who are trained and in the workforce will become taxpayers, and it will also boost the economy of the people in their communities and in the North.

It all leads to a goal of a self-sustaining Northwest Territories where we have everybody in the NWT working, being a taxpayer and being a member of society. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.