Thank you, Madam Chair. This is a different mandate-setting exercise than we experienced last time, and, mostly, that's for the better. I am particularly grateful that it was developed through an iterative process, which the Premier outlined in her comments today, the times that she met with us after we, as all 19 Members, had set the 22 priorities.
The mandate has many strengths in terms of the topics it covers, and reflects the needs and wants of my constituents articulated during the election campaign. It doesn't contain everything that I want, but I am going to choose not to focus on the things that are not in this mandate, which is already too long, and instead look at the things that are here and to say that, in consensus government, you don't get everything you want. That's a reality that I've come to terms with.
I appreciate the use of the SMART goal tool, where SMART stands for specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. I don't think it has always been successful in this context. Some things just don't fit within that measurement tool. I think that using it and trying to quantify 100 new houses, 100 new homeowners, 30 new jobs, I think that kind of specific attention to detail is useful. I think that what we have been able to do by using this SMART goal-setting tool is to create a document that is not primarily aspirational but one that has specific actions that will happen at a particular time and for which we can measure progress, and that is what we are going to do.
I appreciate Cabinet's willingness to collaborate. In the Premier's statement when she tabled the mandate, I trust that all Members of this Assembly will see that their insights, ideas, and suggestions reflected in this mandate would not have been spoken by the Premier of the last Assembly. I appreciate the inclusiveness that it suggests. I want to acknowledge that many of these mandate items are not going to be affordable. I think that there are too many of them, that we are going to end up whittling some out simply because of the cost of trying to do everything that is in this document. Having said that, I think that we can make real gains in policy, such as increasing Indigenous participation in procurement, addressing benefit retention, and better service coordination, among other issues. Even while I don't expect us to have a lot of money to spend, we can make the lives of Northerners better by improving the policies that we have as a government and how they are implemented. With that, those are my opening remarks. I look forward to discussion of the document as a whole. Mahsi, Madam Chair.