Thank you, Madam Chair. When I reviewed this earlier, it made me really think about history, our history in North America, and how everything always comes full circle. You look at the 1920s where there was a big boom, and all of a sudden, the 1930s, there is the Great Depression. You look at how the Canadian and US governments dealt with that. What they did to get through that depression was: they put lots of money into their infrastructure. That's what they did. They kept their people working. That's what I really feel is going on right now; everything comes full circle.

I agree with my colleague from Frame Lake on a lot of his comments, but I think a lot of it, right now, I think we're going to have to go in that direction, to start moving in that direction for infrastructure and start catching up where we can, not to sit here and complain. When I talk about these things, I will try to find some solutions, and for me, I really think that we really need to get our northern businesses involved more. Ten percent, that means 90 percent of our monies are going south. That's insane. I really believe that we have lots of talent in the North, and we really need to capture that and to do whatever we can. I've been saying it. I've been saying it like a mantra: keep the money in the North.

It is going to require some policy reform, I believe, in terms of BIP and that sort of thing, and the way I look at it is that it may seem like a big mountain right now. The way I look at it is: how do you eat a bull moose? One small bite at a time. That's how we have to look at things like the business centre policy. We have to look at this and do what we can because, right now, we are not, and we are not treating it with the urgency that it deserves. This is something that I think we can get ahead of in the life of this Assembly.

Working with our Indigenous partners, their business arms, for me, I think there should be a pecking order that we should look at. I think that we should be having our contracts, having our Aboriginal business, then northern business, then Canadian business, and then other, but it should be really pushing for keeping the money in the North. That's our first and foremost thought when I look at how we are investing in our infrastructure.

Going back to that, I looked at some of the items here. I looked at funding some of the schools and stuff. I don't want to sound like I'm anti-Yellowknife because I'm not. My girls go to school here. In the riding I serve, Tu Nedhe-Wiilideh, that covers Ndilo, Detah, Lutselk'e, and Fort Resolution, and I'm happy that some of the schools, some work is going to be done in the schools. I think that there are some retrofits that need to be done in Ndilo. They don't even have a proper gym, there. I'm going to be pushing for that, because the community of Ndilo have really been pushing for that. The other schools in the Yellowknife area get to look at their nice, big gyms with their banners up on the wall and the various sports that their kids can celebrate, but they can't do that. It's just down the road, here, and that kind of bothers me. Our school in Deninu K'ue, it's been a while since there has been any sort of maintenance. It's a very old building. That got me thinking.

With that, I think I'm not satisfied with what I'm seeing right now, and I am with my colleague from Frame Lake. I'm not going to be voting on it the way it is right now, unless there are some significant changes. Again, we're going to be discussing it in the next little while, but we will get to that when the time comes. With that, marsi cho, Madam Chair.