Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I, too, want to say to the government not to take the cotton balls out of their ears, but take the acorns out of their ears. That’s what we are doing in the Sahtu in terms of the financial picture that Mr. Roland indicated we have. We have a wealthy territory here, Mr. Speaker. The roads that go into the Sahtu and small communities in terms of the amount of money that comes out of these regions. The picture that Mr. Roland painted for us in his budget address, we have a surplus in the small communities. I say again, some of these larger centres take the services for granted. Communities like Colville Lake, Nahanni, Jean Marie, Tsiigehtchic, even Paulatuk, don’t have the basic services that our people need and are asking for, such as medical services, employment officers, social and health workers, things we take for granted in larger centres. These small communities need these services. We have a surplus budget.

We come down here as MLAs to fight for our people to get these basic services met. We expect them to go beyond that to pay the high cost of living in our communities. The Minister indicated that he has a budget that we are operating on a surplus, yet we are still cutting these programs in our communities and that’s hurting us. Mr. Speaker, it doesn’t make sense to the people back in the communities. We have all these dollars. There is a lot of investment happening in the Northwest Territories. We are providing more services in the larger centres, in the hospitals. We are giving them more equipment, more services, yet we can’t even have a doctor stay longer than a day in Colville Lake or have a nurse go into small communities, or social workers. It doesn’t make sense to our people. People back in our small communities that don’t have these services ask what’s wrong with this. Why can’t we have these services? It’s like anybody else in the Northwest Territories, especially the regions that are producing a lot of this development. They are taking a lot out of the land. I have elders who have asked why we aren’t getting our fair share. How come our communities are still dusty as ever? People in our small communities wonder with regard to the budget here. We have a huge surplus and we can’t control our dust in communities and put in services that would keep the dust down. People are buying filters in the summer in our communities. Filters cost $59 to $75 and they have to change them.

I guess that’s kind of puzzling for our people in terms of the picture Mr. Roland has painted of the Northwest Territories. Mr. Speaker, as MLAs, we come here to ensure the basic needs in our communities…Like Abraham…(inaudible)…these basic needs get met before you look at other things.

We can’t even scrape up enough money to go to the store or buy anything. I would suggest to the Minister to have people in our communities work for us, go on the land. They’ve done some harm to our people. Some need to go away and some need to stay in our region and pay retribution back to our people.

Mr. Speaker, along the process here somewhere, I would like to see where the Minister would involve people in the budget planning and give it back to the people. Let them decide how they can use the money. It’s fine here in Yellowknife to determine what the needs are going to be in our communities, but where are the common people, the little people in the communities, who have a say in terms of what gets spent in our communities? Instead of meeting the bureaucracy needs or the system needs, how about meeting the people’s needs? There are a lot of good people in the system. It’s the system that needs to be changed. I will ask the Minister of Finance if he would look at involving the people in the smaller communities in the budget.

Again, Mr. Speaker, I want to conclude that the Northwest Territories is very rich in terms of its wealth, knowledge and traditions. Mr. Roland indicated in his financial address to the people that we have the money. Somewhere along the way, we have to keep these dollars in the Northwest Territories. They are working out a strategy with the government in keeping these resources, especially resource royalties, in the Northwest Territories so that hopefully within this lifetime we can see a real benefit to all people in the Northwest Territories and improve their lives.

I certainly have learned a lot and enjoyed the past year, as Mr. Ramsay said, in terms of working with the people. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

---Applause