Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Including the communities, there is a new area. The Government of Canada and the Government of the Northwest Territories, in terms of polar bear management, have never asked the communities how they would like to see their polar bears managed. In 1988, when I started visiting the communities, residents raised concerns that they were not part of the decision-making body in 1968 when the Government of Canada imposed a quota system to all the polar bear populated communities.

It is a fairly new initiative for our government to include communities and regional hunters and trappers. So, it is a new area that we are getting into. We are trying to use traditional knowledge to come up with a plan that would be acceptable to international communities, and at the same time allow our hunters and trappers to harvest polar bears which, to us at the present time, are not endangered. It could still be at schedule two of the CITES agreement. Thank you.