Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I rise today on our last sitting day to address an issue that has been bothering me for quite some time. It is indisputable that the North has an abundant wealth of petroleum resources. Many of those are located offshore in the Beaufort Delta. What we have heard from the Premier is opposition to the arctic drilling ban, and while I have some questions about that, what I really want to know is what we are doing to support oil and gas development in the Northwest Territories.

I know that the Minister, in his state of the economy address, shall we call it that, earlier this week, also touched on this issue, but one thing we are not addressing are the massive cuts we have made to the public service capacity to manage oil and gas resources. Five million dollars has been cut from their budgets. The Premier has made statements on one side saying, "We need this economic opportunity," while on the other side he has said, "Oil and gas is gone for the foreseeable future." I would like to challenge him on those statements. We have a huge amount of work ahead of ourselves to get the North ready for offshore drilling, if that is the direction we want to take. Oil companies cannot ensure that they can properly address problems that happen on rigs. We all know that some of these offshore rigs have huge challenges with environmental damages when the proper spill responses are not in place, and the Arctic Ocean has been identified as one of those major challenges. I do not see any work ongoing to address those challenges or to put government processes and regulations in place that are going to allow us to assure Northerners that we can deliver prosperity through an oil and gas regime that protects our very fragile arctic environment.

We cannot ignore these problems, and we cannot just stand up and criticize another government's decision, which is their right to make, without addressing these concerns. If we are going to do oil and gas, let's make sure we have the possibility, the capacity, to do it right. I am going to be asking the Premier if he can clarify that work is going on, and if we can assure our residents that we can deliver both economic prosperity and environmental protection, because that is what Northerners today expect from their government. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.