Thanks to the Minister. We certainly have some challenges as an Assembly with attracting the numbers of people we want to have live in the Northwest Territories, considering the environmental scan of the whole government, the economic conditions, the employment, the cost of living in the North and a whole bunch of other social factors that come into play here. I read the document and the Northwest Territories certainly has its work cut out for us. So I guess we’re trying to find that balance with attracting new investment into the North and at the same time sustaining our pristine water and land, and something’s got to give here in regard to meeting our objectives of creating more wealth and weaning off federal government dependency. That will be awhile, but 80 to 90 percent of our dependency is still on the federal government. That won’t happen in this Assembly. So how do we create that freedom, I guess they call it. We could have that freedom from the federal government. I’m not too sure that will be coming very soon.

So this is what I’m looking at, because right now we’re at the whim and beck and call of the federal government in regard to the type of lifestyle we live here in the North because they’re the ones that are holding the strings to our economics and basically giving us a little bit of leeway through devolution. The territorial funding formula is actually decreasing

because people are leaving the Northwest Territories. Yet, at the same time, we want to attract X number of people to live in the Northwest Territories and we’re just dealing right now with the high cost of living here. It’s something that’s been on all the Members’ minds at some point or another as to how do we create a stable Northwest Territories, meet our objectives, meet the high demands of our small communities, communities that do not have some of the essential services that should be in our communities, but because of the finances and the situation we’re in it doesn’t allow us to do so.

We’re doing our best. The Minister has come back with a report on the sustainability and the strength of how we handle our money with the triple A ratings that we are given. That’s a credit to the Minister and his staff for maintaining that. It sort of gives confidence to the investment world and the economic world that the Northwest Territories is fiscally sound and it’s on its way to handling its debt, it’s revenue expenditure.

On this side of the table we know that we’re always asking for more, yet we are told that we have to live within our means and live with less. We’re going to do more, but live with less. That’s kind of like being the theme here. I think we’re tired of living with less when we want to do more. We have the means and I guess that’s something that I’ve been thinking about for a while.

So those are my comments for the Department of Finance.