Mr. Speaker, there are a number of communities in the Northwest Territories who have done some work to begin looking at developing or taking over the present system of justice, the administration of justice. Many of them have done that by getting involved in the present system by setting up small formal or informal working groups to establish working relationships with the local R.C.M.P., local Justices of the Peace, sometimes with the visiting judges and court circuits. In those cases where communities have expressed an interest in doing some work toward looking at setting up a process to begin discussing a process by which they could assume increasing responsibility for the administration of justice, we have tried to respond and, in fact, have just received one from the Member's office which said we should go into his constituency to begin discussing a process where we would establish with his constituents the matter in which they would feel best in working towards an aboriginal justice system, a system of justice where the aboriginal people would have more and more involvement and participation. That is generally the approach we take. We do not go in and deliver packages and encourage people to do things that they do not express an interest in or are not prepared to do anything about at this time. Different communities have different priorities but it is our view where the communities have demonstrated in the beginning a lot of voluntary effort to get involved in the justice system where we have judges and police who are very interested in working cooperatively with communities that these are the areas where we try to get fully involved. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, we are talking about two different things here.

In the Northwest Territories we already have and we are working on it in our capital budget, what we are going to be doing in the area of transportation and it takes into account our reconstruction program over the next fives year or so.

We are also talking about a proposal that the federal government has made. There is some material that has come out of a meeting that had taken place among transportation Ministers and the federal government to look at a cost-sharing program.

They have made some suggestions that in order to take a look at upgrading some of the transportation infrastructure across Canada that they go about it in a certain fashion. There is nothing concrete, Mr. Speaker. It is unfortunate. As I said earlier on we should exercise caution when it comes to dealing with this.

As much as we would like to see new federal money come into the territories we must be cautious that we do not build up our expectations. Right now, even the federal government is being very tight-lipped on the whole matter. They are merely proposals and suggestions. They are merely there for discussion and there is nothing committed. No one has committed any dollars to anybody yet.

They have made some suggestions as to how much could be spent in the provinces and in the territories. I will endeavour to get some of this information out of the documentation that we received to the Members so they can look at it.

Right now, I say that we are continuing our reconstruction program as we had planned in our budget. There is no new money.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Unfortunately, I was not at the initial meetings and what I have is the result of some discussions among the major players. The provinces had some serious reservations about what could be done and who was going to get a piece of the $80 billion that was proposed or going to, $14 billion, sorry. I think there was a few hours spent on who was going to benefit most from it. As I said earlier, we have a number of miles of highway in the territories, and so does Ontario, Quebec and British Columbia. Each province is trying to decide how much they already pay into taxes through federal taxation on fuel and other taxes and how much they were going to get back. How much would the territories get? I think everything is preliminary.

I said that we had determined that, from the amount of highways we have in the territories that we get a fairly good percentage of our highways taken into consideration under this proposed plan. I will get the information out of the document for the Member.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I will answer only from my observations and my communications with the federal Minister. I sat with the federal Minister in his office and, yes, we did talk about the proposal. The very day that I was there, Mr. Speaker, the federal Minister told me that he had just come away from a meeting that showed the federal government were some $7 billion more towards the deficit. It is going to be tough to meet all the needs and expectations for programs across Canada one of which, Mr. Speaker, would be this proposal.

He said this to me, Mr. Speaker, and that is why I am asking that we exercise caution when we take a look at this program. We will participate. We will go to the meetings and we will discuss, from our best advantage point, what monies there are if this program ever comes about and how we would go about spending it.

I would exercise caution that there is no money there yet. The provinces have had serious reservations about how much they are going to benefit from it. Some provinces like it because they are going to get more dollars, the capacity to borrow money or else get money, from the federal government through this program to reconstruct some of their highways or to build new highways to areas that they deem to be essential. Yes, they may have gone in with some bargaining but, Mr. Speaker, I did not attend the initial meetings but our department did.

We put our best foot forward and we ended up with about a quarter of our highway system being considered under this program.