Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m certainly glad to finally see the Cotton Ball Club has taken their cotton balls out of their ears today. There were lots of cotton balls there. Okay.

Mr. Speaker, I’m rising today to talk about multi-year funding once again. I brought this issue to the floor of the House back in October last year, and I’m bringing it again because of the news article in today’s Yellowknifer regarding stabilized funding needed for non-profit groups. Mr. Speaker, there’s one quote out of this that I think is critical to emphasize before I continue, which talks about the struggling NGOs and volunteer organizations. It’s based, in large part, on how they’re funded, not the funding. It’s about how they’re funded, not their funding; I say again, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, this government tabled, almost three years ago, a social agenda and it talked about multi-year funding for NGOs, Mr. Speaker. It’s time we live up to that commitment and promise made to these organizations, Mr. Speaker. How much more time must go by before we address the need we identified that would make their life better?

Mr. Speaker, we need to support them. We support them and I know I support them, Mr. Speaker, so let’s start working like a family and let’s start working like a business and let’s make their life a little better.

Mr. Speaker, NGOs are the heart and soul of our community, yet we make them struggle year after year, funding application after funding application. In my experience, we’ve never cut anybody off, yet it’s a key role of this government to create hot air and administrative paperwork for these organizations that’s not necessary. Mr. Speaker, NGOs do what they do best and it certainly isn’t providing paperwork for government just because we want more paperwork, Mr. Speaker. Let’s uncuff these NGOs. Let’s take them out of that hamster wheel of administration, on and on and on. Their purpose is to serve the people, not to serve paperwork.

Mr. Speaker, it’s time we start dealing with this. This would take a serious amount of stress off those organizations. It would take away the duress because they’re waiting for the 11th-hour phone call to finally get the word that their funding is coming. Mr. Speaker, they cannot do long-term planning because they have staff they can only promise a job to until March 31st every year.

Mr. Speaker, in closing I’m going to say that this government must live up to its commitment it made and, Mr. Speaker, I will have questions at the appropriate time for the Premier to deal with this issue finally. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

---Applause