Mr. Speaker, for a number of years I know that the federal government and a number of provinces -- Saskatchewan, British Columbia, the Yukon as well as ourselves here in the Northwest Territories -- have been attempting to negotiate a trans-boundary water agreement. They have reached a stage where they have drafted what they call a master agreement. This is an attempt to try to come to some sort of agreement on how to conduct ourselves as public governments in our various jurisdictions, so we take into account the concerns of people, especially downstream from us. In our case, we are sometimes downstream from British Columbia and, particularly, Alberta. There has been a master agreement reached during the course of the summer. As I understand it, there were some concerns raised by representatives of the Treaty 8 First Nations. At this time, the agreement is momentarily held, as we are trying to deal with some of these concerns before signatures are made to this master agreement.

Once that is done, it sets the context for any other work the department might be able to do, with regard to some of the smaller watersheds that feed into the Mackenzie that are inside the boundaries of the Northwest Territories.