Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Lewis is correct. This is not a base review, but it was what the government of the day chose to do. I understand Mr. Lewis when he says it should have been done when governments had a lot of money. I would just draw your attention to page five, which says, "Our government is facing lower revenue growth, and increasing expenditure pressures. We must be prepared to make some hard decisions in the near future - decisions about what we expect from government...," and it goes on, and I will let you read it yourself. That was the budget address, February 1991, when Mr. Ballantyne was experiencing the pressure of running out of money. Maybe that is what triggered this review.
We accept that some communities may not want to take on responsibilities, Mr. Chairman. We also accept the fact that communities may want to say to Mr. Kakfwi, "Well, I am sorry, but I do not want it under your rules." I think Mr. Kakfwi is prepared to be flexible and look at that with the communities.
I would point out, Mr. Chairman, when we are talking about the new capital process where we are going to be consulting more with MLAs and people in communities, there will be some discretion in that capital process for communities to say, "Well, we are going to prioritize items that we want you to do," which I think puts a little more of the decision-making process on the communities. There may even be some instances in these transfers where there may be block funding transfers and communities do what they want. Maybe in housing -- I do not know what Mr. Morin has planned, but I think we would be open to that. And again, I am moving into Mr. Patterson's area but I also know that Mr. Patterson, on the community justice system, is prepared to sit down with communities and talk about the very thing that Mr. Lewis has just raised, which is not sending people off to a corrections facility, which costs us a whole lot of money, and I am not sure how much good it does. So I think in that one, communities would be able to participate in the justice system at their level, take care of people who have run afoul of the system, and it might save Mr. Whitford, who is the present Minister, a lot of money in the corrections system.
So those things and all of those things are open for negotiation and discussion. I think I would have to let you ask Mr. Kakfwi for more specifics in how he intends to go about the negotiations for the transfer, but just in general terms, Mr. Chairman, I would say that all of those things are on the table.