Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I too want to finish off this week with words of encouragement mostly to our small business people in the Northwest Territories, especially to the ones in the Sahtu region.

We have small business owners in Deline who guide people for world-class fishing. We have people in Tulita work in the business to serve the oil and gas sector of the government. We have business people in Colville Lake, where the best furs in Canada are trapped. These young trappers are business people. We also have business people in Fort Good Hope looking after the community through the housing initiatives. Certainly in Norman Wells we have 38 members who belong to the Norman Wells Chamber of Commerce. Just in the community of Tulita and Norman Wells, through the district structure, we have 39 registered business owners.

One of the biggest business contributors to the Sahtu region has been the oil and gas exploration stages, with $150 million invested into the Sahtu since 2011-12. That type of money had a lot of people thinking about what they can do for themselves.

Business people sometimes take a real hard kick in the face because the perception out there is they are just there for themselves. The business people are mom-and-dad shops, they are your brothers, your sisters, who go to work at six o’clock in the morning, Monday to Monday, weekends, they work hard, they pay the taxes, they contribute to the communities.

Even the oil companies, they have an obligation and they are working their best through our partnership, through the land claim. But even the oil companies, when we really need them, like Husky, when they were looking for that young girl in Tulita, Husky donated $16,000 for fuel for the community. Nobody else stepped up, not even our government.

Business is good if you do it well. I want to say to all the business people, keep your dreams alive. Think for the people, and that’s what our business people are doing. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.