Oh, that's ominous. Thank you, Madam Speaker. Madam Speaker, a number of years ago the Government of the Northwest Territories introduced the business incentive policy, better known as BIP. The government's intention was to encourage greater government spending in the north by making northern bids on government contracts more attractive. However, since this policy was introduced, there has been a constant struggle over the exact definition of a northern company. It seems that the initial policy laid down some criteria which would define a northern company. Then some companies, which many think of as southern, found ways to meet these criteria and qualified for preference under the policy. So the government added more criteria and some southern companies found new ways to jump through those hoops as well, and so on and so on.

Now we have a complicated policy that frustrates northern business people twice: once, when they have to fill out all the forms and once again, when a contract goes to someone who is just going to have a bunch of southerners doing the jobs anyway.

I would encourage the government to strongly consider starting from scratch, start from the ground up and make a new policy that will be simple and effective, because if the current complicated and probably ineffective policy is all we have, we might as well just get rid of it and forget about the whole thing. Madam Speaker, thank you.