Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Good question. As the honourable Member know, we are in some fairly

sensitive negotiations right now with the aboriginal groups that are directly affected with some of this mineral exploration that's going on, particularly right across the territories. As a matter of fact, they're meeting today, I believe, in an effort to see if we can find appropriate language that would satisfy everybody so we can move forward collectively to the federal government to reach an arrangement with respect to the transfer of responsibilities.

Hypothetically, if this transfer took place tomorrow, then the royalty regime would be a priority in our eyes. We've done a whole bunch of consultative work as to what kind of competitive tax regime we would want in the territories, and there are a number of scenarios that we've been working on. However, that is not the case right now; we don't have that legislative responsibility.

However, the federal government and Mr. Irwin recently made an announcement that they're prepared to review the current royalty and tax regime as it relates to both the federal and territorial governments. I wrote a letter to Mr. Irwin last week applauding him for this effort because I think it's important. I think we're going to be able to reach an arrangement with him where it's a joint initiative between the federal and territorial governments, because ultimately if there's any change prior to minerals being transferred to this government we will inherit that change and it's extremely important that the new regime, whatever it may be, is done in a manner that's in the best interests of all northerners.

So to answer the honourable Member's question; in short form, we've undertaken an internal review of what we would see as options for a new tax royalty regime should we get the responsibility for minerals. Parallel with that, the federal government has said that they are going to review it and they have agreed that we would participate in that review and we will share with them all the work we have done with respect to royalty and tax regimes. Thank you.