Thank you, Mr. Chair. First of all I'm going to talk about some good things that are happening out there. It's great to see that the government is looking at the Western Canada Lottery Act and actually bringing it into the system so we're not losing the million dollars. Now, give credit where credit is due on that. However, when we come to looking at these -- I know, sorry. Shock to the heart. When it comes to the multi-sport games, we see a reduction of $500,000. We're losing $150,000 to the games. These games belong to the Government of the Northwest Territories, and if the government doesn't want to own these games, then please give them to Sport North and Aboriginal Sport Circle, and give them the money to run it. We're cutting money right now, $150,000, to the games, and I don't know where we're going to see this shortfall come from, unless it's coming from lotteries.

If it's coming from lotteries, then we're taking away money from the grassroots. Lotteries are about grassroots development for the five organizations, and it's a Sport and Recreation program that the Minister talked about in her Minister's statement today.

I have to give credit to the department when they talk about 911; it really doesn't have a huge impact in my region, but potentially I'm hoping that it will and then they can work with the companies that have electronics out there helping people out in the bush so they can work with that, so they can actually get this information where people are and emergencies are dealt with in that manner.

Moving on to my concerns about the position that's being deleted from the budget. It belongs in the Nahendeh, but actually the focus is working with designated authorities. We just heard the Auditor General's report about how badly the department is dealing with designated authorities. I'm hearing stuff out there that they say, well, you want self-government, here it is. This is self-government. We're hearing that from the communities I'm dealing with. I don't think the department is saying that, but I'm hearing that from the people. The people are sitting there saying, well, it's great, we're going to have somebody from Yellowknife who doesn't understand what's going on in our region. How is somebody from Fort Smith going to help?

Well, both these people, if it's out of Fort Smith or out of Yellowknife, there is additional cost to it. Unless we're just going to do lip service, which is, we'll give you a phone call. This is capacity. We're talking about capacity and designated authorities. Why do we have problems? Because we're not building the capacity.

Yes, this department does a great job of the school community government, but there are costs to it. Regional staff need to be in the communities, working with the people. If we're not doing that, we're going to have the same situation as we have presently, and that really is disappointing. I have a strong feeling for this department, because I worked for it for 23 years. I understand the importance of it, but it's about capacity, and we're not doing that.

If we want to look at some cost-saving measures, why do we have two offices in the North Slave? When I first started out, North Slave was based out of Rae, which is now Behchoko. Now, we have one in Yellowknife and one in Behchoko. So, again, there is a cost-saving measure that we can look at.

Location of regional offices. We have an office in Fort Smith. If you want to look at efficiency and better service, it should be based in Hay River. Or then you look at the two Deh Cho communities, which are Fort Providence and Kakisa. Maybe they should be serviced out of Fort Simpson, if you're going to keep the office in Fort Smith. So it becomes more efficient. You want to save money? There are two ideas.

We're not going to save money. We're not going to look at that, unfortunately, and it really saddens me because the Department of Municipal and Community Affairs, the big concern is capacity and building our communities. The great thing about building capacity is it's ongoing. When you get a good job done and you train people, unfortunately, they move on, but you need to continue working on that until the community becomes self-sufficient. If we're not going to allow that, then we're in trouble; and by cutting that position, we're having a huge detriment to my region.

If you don't want designated authorities and you want to say, well, it's a DIAND issue, or the federal government's issue, then why are you in the business? Realistically, the federal government and the Department of Municipal Affairs have a responsibility for the people in the communities. I know, in my riding, where we're lacking right now, and we have four designated authorities. If we're not going to work with them and you're going to delete positions that have a huge impact on us, then we're still going to be having problems year after year after year. We're going to have to bring people in, and that's unfortunate. That's sad.

I know. My time is up, so I thank the Chair for allowing me to rant on for about an extra minute. Thank you.