Hon. Nick G. Sibbeston:

Honourable senators, my question is for the Leader of the Government. At the end of March, the federal government ended the ecoENERGY Retrofit program. Many homeowners, service providers and companies were negatively affected, as honourable senators can appreciate. In the North — the Yukon, Northwest Territories and Nunavut — this program was very effective and used by people to close out the cold and, in their own way, save energy and thus ameliorate the global warming situation. The territorial government will continue to fund their 50 per cent share of the program, but it cannot replace the money lost from the federal government.

We in the North sometimes do not understand the way things happen in the South and why governments do the things they do. Recently it was announced that the federal government would spend $1 billion on security for the G20 and G8 conferences. I am also aware that the government will have to spend billions of dollars on prisons because of their approach to dealing with crime.

We in the North are wondering how the government can justify closing such an effective program, which probably costs just a few million dollars, while at the same time the government is willing to spend billions of dollars on the other measures that I spoke about. We do not understand why the government does these things.

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