Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to direct my question to the Minister responsible for the Workers' Compensation Board. I had written a letter to the former Minister in August regarding some concerns I had with respect to the way the Workers' Compensation Board operates. One of the policies that the Compensation Board operates under is that Members that have a concern with regard to claims or concerns about their constituents have to go to the Minister rather than dealing directly with the board itself. I would like to ask the Minister, when was this policy directive given and by which Minister, that Members on this side have to go directly to you as opposed to going to the Workers' Compensation Board?

Mr. Speaker, is it normal practice for the corporation to actually choose a site after only one year of participation? I find it quite unfair that they would be prime candidates for the 1994 Arctic Winter Games.

Mr. Speaker, back when Quebec was involved with the Arctic Winter Games, that was also selected as one of the sites. In what year did Alberta start participating in the Arctic Winter Games? I was not even aware there were people from Alberta participating.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to direct my question to the Minister responsible for sport and recreation. I have a newspaper clipping of September 23 with regard to Lesser Slave Lake, Alberta being chosen as the site for the 1994 Arctic Winter Games. I would like to ask the Minister why, for the first time, these games will be held South of 60.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Later this week Members of this Assembly will return home to spend the holiday session with their families, friends and community people. All across the Northwest Territories people will be enjoying Christmas services in their community churches. In Fort Providence, however, the church will be empty for the third Christmas, despite a resolution and promise from this government last July that the church would be renovated.

Mr. Speaker, I was shocked to learn that the expenditure of $25,000 for capital renovations to the church has been cancelled. My heart goes out to the people of my community, especially the elders who have been dreaming of the day when they would once again worship in the church where they were taught Christian ways by their parents and grandparents.

How does the government expect to retain any credibility with the communities when projects such as this are frozen by bureaucrats in Yellowknife due to a financial crisis that surfaced overnight? I attended the standing committee on finance meeting as recently as September, and there was no mention of any financial crisis. The people of my constituency want to know how the Government of the NWT got into so much financial trouble so quickly without any warning. A $65 million deficit does not just happen overnight, and voters want to know if these financial problems were hidden from them and us until after the election.

I would like to close, Mr. Speaker, by stating that the life of an MLA is difficult enough due to prolonged absence from our families and the communities and keeps us from the traditional activities which some of us love. We do not need the additional burden of having our hard work and commitment to the interests of our people dismissed with the stroke of a pen by corporate-style government.

The elders of my constituency relied upon me to do the work on their behalf; to achieve the aspirations of their communities. I will work hard on their behalf to convince other Members of the need for these renovations. I guess that is why I am particularly hurt, Mr. Speaker, by the fact that the Minister of Culture and Communications does not realize or care about the effects of his decision. Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, this is only one option that the government has offered and the only option. All I am suggesting is that we should be open to other options besides this because we do have the national agenda in which aboriginal organizations are working toward self-government. We cannot lose sight of that.

We have to devolve a lot more issues to the regional level. I agree with the Government Leader on that. I am suggesting that to free up more resources you have to free up more person years. Even if you cut the civil servants in half now, this government saves at least $300,000. You could complete the highway to Yellowknife: you could have a better airport. You need $30 million to complete all the housing inventories of the people of the North.

I am suggesting that there are ways of making that work now if the government is serious about devolving resources and responsibilities to the communities. But it also might mean a reduction in the civil servants. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I know where my community is coming from, I know where the regions are coming from. I also recognize where the government is coming from too. I would hope that somewhere in the next four years we will be able to say that we must reduce the public service and give all the responsibilities to the communities. I believe that is the only way we could see more production on the way you spend your money, as opposed to the way it is now. We do have a lot of program moneys, a lot of capital moneys that go in supporting the public service. The more positions or money you free up, the more programs you will be able to offer the communities. I believe as it devolves you just have a more healthy environment.

The North is the only place in Canada that that opportunity exists. Most of the southern institutions do not have that opportunity. The aboriginal people still deal directly with Ottawa. Over here we do have a large native population that has to depend a lot on the public service for their programs. But that does not mean that if tomorrow the public service dissolved that the aboriginal people are going to be left out in the cold. The federal government is still there to take those responsibilities back if they need to be addressed. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

My apologies to the Government Leader, Mr. Chairman, but my feeling is that we do have a document here that the communities will be responding to, and I would presume that the response would not be as good if these documents were the government's position on self-government, and we have two other documents here on the aboriginal definition of self-government. Perhaps then we might be able to put the two documents together to come up with one common goal, but I do not see it happening yet. I just wanted to mention that.

I recognize that there is an urgent need to start giving more responsibility to the communities, but also at the same time we should be able to suggest to the communities what they see as a more effective or efficient delivery of core programs to the communities.

Reducing Number Of Civil Servants

I also wanted to mention, and I do not know whether it is mentioned in the Government Leader's statement, but I have not seen too much mention about what happens to the people that are civil servants in the Northwest Territories right now, and whether or not there are any plans to reduce the civil service and divert more responsibilities through attrition where the positions are freed up and transferred to the regions or to the communities. I would say that even if, Mr. Chairman, we cut the civil servants today or tomorrow, life will still go on in the communities. The local education authorities will still operate under the existing moneys that they have, and social services will still operate. It is not as if because we cut the civil service the communities are going to be helpless. In fact, I think it would motivate the communities more to start taking on more responsibilities.

The point, Mr. Chairman, is that because we have a large civil service population -- I think it is 163 per thousand in the Northwest Territories -- and the Yukon is the second highest where I think it is 112 per thousand, but that is still high. I would think that if we were to seriously look at decentralizing to the communities or to the regions the sooner it has to be there in the reduction of the people that in the communities are called "caretakers" -- I guess in Yellowknife you call them civil servants. I think it is time that we look seriously at what we are trying to implement, not only developing positions on it but actually doing something to reduce the dependency on the institutions that have been thrived on by western culture for a very long time.

Mr. Chairman, I have not had an opportunity to read the report itself and I do not know whether this is the Beatty report, and I have not read that either. I have just been skimming through the document itself and Members here, as well as the Executive, have been responding basically, I would presume, to the report itself.

Again I am saying that the aspirations of the communities have not really been addressed. I see this report as another report generally geared toward the prime body concept, and we are still the administrative arms of this government.

I had an opportunity to listen to the Western Constitutional Commission in some of the communities and some of the presentations, and what I keep hearing is perhaps at odds with what this report is all about. I believe some of the communities are saying that if we have the creation of Nunavut and a new territory, then this is what the Western Arctic could be facing with regard to the delivery of government in the Western Arctic. Never mind the national agenda. I am afraid that if we only accept this as a document to offer to the communities, I would think that most of the communities will not consider it.

You might also have a different view from the communities where they have signed an agreement in principle for land claims. Those are the communities that do have a different agenda based on extinguishment of rights. So again we have a situation where perhaps this document would be acceptable to them. But if you look at the Deh Cho region, which I am not referring to with regard to the Deh Cho constituency -- the region itself is composed of 10 communities -- they have gone through a lot of pressures since this government came to be. They also had pressures before government started moving up here. In fact, 1992 would be 500 years since we have been exercising and responding to pressures that still exist. Another pressure is a whole new document, again to create an existing government, or perhaps just giving it the self-government definition. It certainly sounds good, but I do not think it reflects the aspirations of the communities.

In the communities now, I think what we are hearing is that communities are saying, "We do have an inherent right. We did have rights before, 500 years ago; and we have been taking care of ourselves, perhaps not in the ways that the western culture wants us to, but we survived for over 30,000 years. I think if you give us the opportunity, we could prove to you that we probably could survive for another 30,000 years without having that kind of an institution again being imposed on the communities."

I realize what Nellie is saying, that this is only an offer to the communities and the communities do not have to accept it, or they can accept it at the pace they want to; but Nellie has not said anything else other than that. This is the only offer that she is giving the communities, no other opportunities that may exist.