Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Not to the substance of the budget dialogue but to the process, I would like to say that I applaud the Minister for his efforts to consult with people in the communities. It is always a debate, to dialogue or not to dialogue, to consult or not to consult, because we don’t have any way of realistically predicting how many people, how many constituents, how many people in the communities will actually be interested in taking the time to come out and speak with the government. Perhaps there could be some tweaking or adjusting done in terms of the timing of the consultation if people feel that the input could be put to better use if we had it earlier on in the process. So, those are things that we could think of.

But the fact is that for the last three years the Minister of Finance has taken his staff and he has gone out to the people in the Northwest Territories. If they did not avail themselves of that opportunity to have input, that is their choice, but we as a government have, I believe, a duty to consult and we made those efforts and we made that investment. So it’s hard now, after the fact, to say that we shouldn’t have done it because of poor turnout. As Mr. Bouchard said, in Hay River there was something conflicting that night. I didn’t even make it to the budget dialogue that night as there

was something else going on in town, but I can’t remember what it was.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to also say that for myself as a part of this government, I am happy to have someone like Mr. Miltenberger in the position of Minister of Finance. That is not an easy job, I can tell you that I’ve been here as long as he has and I could not do that job. It is something that after the number of years that he’s been doing that job… I was saying to his brother at the airport the other day, that Michael – oh, I should say Mr. Miltenberger – almost makes the job look easy. But I know it is not easy and it is leading a team, and we as a government have credibility when we speak to our counterparts and our other Ministers across this country when that portfolio is handled by someone who has the ability to do it well. So I would like to thank him for his years as Finance Minister and say a job well done. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.