What I've committed politically to Cape Dorset is that we will sign a transfer agreement covering their move to take over Social Services, Economic Development, Housing and Public Works, by April 1. There is an overall agreement that this can happen but there are specific outstanding issues we need to work out. The departments still have some concerns in specific areas and so does Cape Dorset. What we've agreed is that we will sign the transfer agreement by then and the agreement will be general in some areas.

It will require a joint leap of faith to say that outstanding issues left unresolved will be taken care of in a cooperative spirit. If there is anything in the transfer agreement that comes up later to the detriment of the community, it will be interpreted to mean that this government did not intentionally negotiate it to be that way.

There will be a political understanding that it was intended to mean good things for both sides and it will be negotiated to reflect that as we go along. They do need some kind of definitive package fairly soon to keep the morale of their community up. They've been hoping for this for well over a year and we appreciate all the hard work they've done so we've said we would be prepared to do that. We can't dot every "i" before we move into this. There has to be some demonstration of goodwill. Thank you.