Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I’d like to raise a similar issue to what I did yesterday in my statement about the dogmatic, out-of-touch, yet sumptuous bureaucratic system located in Yellowknife, and why this 15th Assembly has to seriously consider restructuring and perhaps downsizing by way of decentralizing or relocating various components so that we can all say with confidence that our Legislative Assembly is actually in control and can change and influence its own bureaucratic bulldog.

Mr. Speaker, I feel that we are losing ground on retaining this control of this once reputable and trustworthy companion we call the public service of the Northwest Territories. The people who are the first to see the façade of good, fair, balanced public service that is supposedly professional and impartial are the people in the remote and smaller communities.

This government is certainly not impartial, by any stretch of the word, when it comes to addressing small community concerns versus the concerns raised in our larger centres. Infrastructure, housing, economic development and health are only some of the areas that are out of balance. By out of balance I’m talking about things like the time it takes to react to the small community concerns is never as quick as the large centres. The time to assess or assert responsibility always gets passed back and forth between the GNWT, the First Nations and/or the small community councils, who never have enough resources to address the deficiency anyway, with no positive resolutions in place.

The resolution of many concerns like property taxation, homeownership, income support, small business support, and alternative health care issues all seem to have become permanent warts on our bureaucratic bulldog backside. A puppy whimpers because it wants to rid itself of these ailments, but does not take consistent, planned, and agreeable approaches when applying wart remover to remove these ailments. So, Mr. Speaker, we need to have the assistance, cooperation and the full participation of our smaller communities if our bureaucratic bulldog wants to disinherit itself of these aging warts on its backside. Then we can all confidently say that it is possible to teach an old dog new tricks. Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.

---Applause