Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I rise to state that this is not a point of privilege. Several Members have pointed to the lack of communication; there’s notification. I have a copy of a letter that was sent August 31, 2015, advising committee of exactly that. The MLA for Range Lake referenced that in his notes, and a fundamental issue is how does government react in an emergency situation? We’ve known that we’ve been in drought conditions for four years, and everybody refers to how we did it last year. Well, the drought is still there, so the expectation is that we use the same process.

Now there are others saying you’re backed into a corner. Well, I look at the fire program. We know that fires can be a problem every year, and now I guess we can put water in the same category.

We, as a government, felt it was very important that we had to respond to the PUB. We had two extensions and we were facing a third extension where we had to make a decision one way or another. One way would be to have everybody in the Northwest Territories pay an extra 25 percent over a two-year period, including subsidizing the diesel consumption in Yellowknife, and we felt we gave notice to committee on August 31st and recognizing

that it would be voted on here in this Legislative Assembly.

Mr. Speaker, we feel there is no point of privilege here. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.