Finance committee  Mr. Chairman, may I have my deputy minister respond to that question in detail?

Finance committee  Absolutely. You see more and more cruise ships heading north, through Greenland and through our Northwest Passage. That gives the potential for more tourism activity, once you have that infrastructure in there. Again, whatever infrastructure is put in, to alleviate some of thos

Finance committee  Of course we've looked at these options and opportunities. We pay attention to that, but you still have to remember we're in the Arctic, and for the most part we have -40° temperatures in the wintertime. In the high Arctic, you don't have any sunlight for months on end, for six m

Finance committee  Absolutely. We've been speaking about “base-plus” when it comes to program funding and other funding opportunities that the federal government has for its programs. Having a small population, especially when it comes to health, is a real problem for us. Even though there are bill

Finance committee  I don't have those numbers in front of me.

Finance committee  Probably five months out of the year.

Finance committee  Yes.

Finance committee  I don't see why it shouldn't be. There are opportunities here and there for opening up the markets to other countries, and especially—

Finance committee  We're in the central part of Canada, and of course the Mackenzie is on the western side, another time zone away, so it's—

Finance committee  Absolutely, and that's something Canada has be cognizant of, because we want to maintain our sovereignty in the Arctic Ocean but we don't have a deep-sea port in central Canada, in the central Arctic. It's something that's critical for Canada to pay attention to, but overall, onc

Finance committee  One of the things I've indicated is that for any kind of investment that's made by the federal government for construction and infrastructure building, especially housing units and other smaller infrastructure things that we request from Ottawa, everything has to be shipped up fr

Finance committee  Yes, absolutely. When I became premier I made education our number one priority. It's very difficult when you have small, isolated communities, and we do want to have better living conditions, like housing. We have one of the most notorious health records in the nation because

Finance committee  I'll have to get back to you but we know for a fact that the graduation rates are going up and attendance rates are going up. I don't have the specific numbers but I can speak to a small community in the middle of Canada, Baker Lake, where there is actual mining extraction taking

Finance committee  Our population is very small and we have seasonal employment that all of a sudden brings the number of unemployed down. As a government we do have a land claims agreement where, in article 23, we have to try to meet the 85% Inuit content in our territorial government, including s

Finance committee  It's going to be very difficult. That's why we asked for assistance from the technical folks in the federal department. We pay 80% of the cost of power generation in Nunavut. We have 25 small communities. Again, when it comes to public units, we pay a major part of that. The O