Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would point out this is my third go-around in the Northwest Territories and we did three roundtables in Yellowknife last government where we brought people in. What has become clear to me – and it’s credit, I would suggest, both to having small communities and a small government – a lot of the concerns that I’ve heard going from community to community in the regional centres is very consistent with the concerns I’ve heard raised by the Members in this House. A lot of them focus on almost identical issues.
The people are very, for the most part, well informed who show up. They have issues they want to talk about and we take those concerns into consideration, the concerns about economic investment and critical infrastructure, more training
prevention, managing our money, don’t go into debt, but not too far. There is the issue to manage the cost of living. There are very, very consistent themes. They want to put more money into the social program areas, as I will lay out in the budget address tomorrow.
We are, as a legislature and government, responsive to nearly all those issues raised. We don’t have the resources maybe to address them all to the level people would like, but we do listen carefully.
I just want to once again comment on the link between what we hear in an MLA’s constituency from the people who are there and what we hear from the MLA, which I think reflects well on this process and the MLAs in this House. Thank you.