Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Along the same lines as my colleague for Hay River North here, I would like to make comments on the budget address today.
For the public that really doesn’t want to know how we got here today and the message that was delivered, at the beginning of the Assembly, we created priorities. We’ve had a lot of dialogue since the Assembly started. Specifically with this 2013-14 fiscal budget, it started back in September and looking at how we can look at our priorities, and making healthy, educated people away from poverty, increasing our economic development strategies; those kinds of things. All the hard work that went into the meetings in September and the dialogue that we’ve had since then up until last week when committee got back together and the session in the House here today.
I just want to commend the government for listening to this side of the House. That’s what consensus government is about, although there is still some work that needs to be hashed out over the next six weeks. I think we are going to be working on those details in the days to come.
Some of the things that we did ask for I think we’re going to look at continuing to push for to see if we can get those addressed. Even before we continue on, I’d just like to thank all Members on this side of the House for all the hard work that they’ve done in committee meetings, attending the meetings, bringing up their concerns, and actually taking the approach of creating our own priorities on this side to see what we want to see in our fiscal budget that will protect our people, create jobs and some of the stuff that we’re actually putting into the budget here today.
As I told one of my colleagues, as the budget address was being written out, it was really nice to see that we did have our footprint in this budget address moving forward for the ‘13-14 fiscal year, putting money into things that we talked about, mental health and addictions, midwifery, early childhood development, things that we’re slowly building on and continuing to create that momentum, so that for the next two and a half years we are going to try to create a more efficient government that is going to protect the people of the Northwest Territories and our residents.
I look forward to the next two and a half years and continue to look forward to these six weeks because there are going to be a lot of discussions and debates that are going to happen in this House. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Moses. The Member for Hay River South, Mrs. Groenewegen.
