Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just have a few quick comments.

I’d like to give some

more updates as we go along and I’ll go through some of the issues that I think are important and that I’d like to see more information on.

I was dealing with the Hay River Woodland Manor and we know that there’s an expansion being planned, being designed as we speak. Obviously, I think there’s going to be some carry-over from that money because we never broke ground this year, and if I could get an update on how that currently stands and when we expect to put the shovels to the ground for that project.

I know we’re completing the Hay River Health Centre. Obviously,

that’s key in that we know that it

seems like we’re ahead of schedule and now we’re kind of back on schedule, so maybe just a quick update where that would be at.

My concern, as well, is we talked about capital and we talked about what’s gone on but what might not be in the budget. We know that the medical clinic is going to be renovated for administration and we know there’s going to be shortage of administration. So I’m just wondering if the department has assessed what they want to do going forward for those admin positions. Some of these are going to need leases or we’re going to need a building. Have we got a cost-analysis for some of that stuff?

I assume something that’s not in the budget and we’ve obviously talked about us getting involved in and trying to commit to some dollars to the dredging. We talked about it in the House that

it’s a

federal responsibility, but we know that it’s been a federal responsibility, as well,

and we’ve gone

ahead and committed 25 percent to that type of project now.

We’re doing that for the Tuk-Inuvik

Highway; we’re trying to do that for the Mackenzie Valley Highway;

so I mean that’s a federal

responsibility and I think we need to commit to some of that money to dredging of the Hay River harbour.

The upgrades to SMCC, South Mackenzie Correctional Centre, obviously I can’t see any major retrofits for tha

t facility and it’s getting to an age

where we should be looking at that and getting that information in the budget.

Some of the Members have already talked about our communities asking for more infrastructure. Hay River is one of those bigger communities that has a deficit in infrastructure and it needs additional funding for that and those levels have been consistent for many years. We need to increase those capital infrastructure dollars so that those communities that are really behind the eight ball on some of that infrastructure need to, you know, finish some of that stuff up, catch up.

Again, some transportation stuff, we see the Transportation Strategy there. Regarding the Build Canada F

und, we’ve seen some of that planning

going forward and the concern would be that we haven’t paid too much attention to the main highway, Highway No. 1, coming into the territory. We’ve talked about Highway No. 1 out toward Simpson but we haven’t talked about keeping the

current roads up to speed. Highway No. 1 has

n’t

been one that has been talked about,

I think. We’d

started a program for widening it. That looks really good and is very effective for the trucking industry. We all know where the majority of our trucking industry comes from. It would be nice if we upgraded more of that road to that standard.

Another area is, obviously, schools are important. We’ve just renovated Diamond Jenness, but there are two schools we have in the regular system that need some upgrades.

They’re starting to get to an

age where they

’re going to need upgrades.

The other one is the French school. I know we have some discussion and we have some court cases going back and forth and we know there’s going to be demand there. In either Yellowknife or Hay River, is there anything in our budgets for capital on that? Instead of planning for some of that stuff, we’re waiting for the courts to just tell us we’re going to have to stroke a cheque to fix this problem. Over that short

period of time, we wouldn’t really

want to.

Why wouldn’t we put this into a budget?

Why wouldn’t we start planning for it? Why wouldn’t we put it into the four- or five-year plan, because we know that we’re going to be responsible for some of it.

Another step that I’m glad to see is the parks upgrades.

We’re seeing more and more parks

upgrades and we’ve been getting nothing but compliments about our parks.

We’ve had some

people in the South Slave and in the Dehcho and the people who are just pleased to see those kinds of facilities and it’s good to see some of that stuff.

The last thing being, you know, some of the health facilities in Yellowknife, we’re upgrading them. Stanton Hospital is going to become a priority here real quick and I think we need a better understanding how that’s going to work, how that’s going to roll out over the next 30 years.

That’s

going to happen, the old facility versus a new facility. What are we doing with that old facility? Is it going to become an empty building that we’re going to have to start to fill? Are we going to look to replace off-site services that we currently have in Yellowknife and put them into the old hospital? Some of that stuff that’s more practical for our government, we should be using that as opposed to just leaving it and letting the market decide what’s going to happen. Our concern from the regional perspective is just like when we built the big tower downtown recently and we called that the devolution building for a while. There are issues that the regions are concerned with, that there’s more and more coming into Yellowknife and that if we built the facilities to that standard and put in a lot of vacancies there, then that’s just promoting it. The GNWT and operations will continue to find space and lease more space in Yellowknife and I’m concerned that that will defer and break down some

of the issues that we’ve been trying to get decentralized.

So, Mr. Chair, those are my main comments. Thank you.