Mr. Speaker, the negotiations have not been suspended. I believe that my statement here said that they were not going very far in terms of a package that I felt would be acceptable, financially, to the people of the Northwest Territories. We have settled almost all points, but the financial area is one where we are still having discussions on.

Recently we accelerated the discussions to the Prime Minister's level again saying that we are just not gaining any momentum. The problem with the federal government is that this funding, the financial part of it is new money. Certainly since the finalization of the Norman Wells agreement with the federal government, the federal government has had an increase of $50 million, approximately a year from those resources from Norman Wells.

So we are having a bit of an argument that rather than looking at it as new money, it is money that they have acquired since the agreement to pay resources from Imperial Oil has been going to the federal coffers last year. So we have accelerated those discussions once more. The Minister of Finance has already brought that up with the federal Minister of Finance, Mr. Mazankowski about two weeks ago.

It seems in the last couple of weeks there has been some movement. They have not been suspended. I just made the statement and wanted to be completely honest with you that in the areas that are expressly important to us, in take-overs or any type of additional responsibilities, that the financial resources be there and that is the area that we are having extreme difficulties with.