Mr. Chairman, I agree they shouldn't be provocative. In response to the Member for Iqaluit, I still say categorically, we would be in deep doo-doo if this government was not prepared and had not assigned the kinds of resources it had some three years ago to this task. Members were clamouring, saying what is this government waiting for; why is it not assigning staff for this very, very important function that everybody in the eastern Arctic wants to discuss? It's not easy to conjure up the reaction if we had done nothing.

I have to remind Members that they were wondering why we couldn't assign a fixed budget for this initiative when we first introduced it. I had refused to put a budget on it because I had said I cannot do it until I have a realistic idea about how much it would require. I know that if it was too low, it would be severely criticized as a motley commitment to an initiative that is in high demand in the communities. I suffer now with the probability, at least in the view of the two Members, of having assigned too much money to this task. I don't disagree with the Members there.

They will note as the details come out that there is, in fact, a proposed reduction in the area of community transfers for the coming year. We acknowledge that the amount of money we have assigned to this task is more than we what we require. I'm prepared to downsize. There's no difficulty. But I say again that we have to be ready and are ready to do business. The work we did in Cape Dorset has been a tremendous achievement. We have worked out many of the kinks and wrinkles and I'm very happy that Cape Dorset took on this initiative at the time it did. We're all doing an evaluation of that.

The Nunavut Implementation Commission has involved itself and wants to be part of that evaluation, as well. They have involved themselves in community transfers and see it as a positive initiative. They want to provide some more suggestions on how we can approach this work. I agree, not all communities are prepared to get involved. Some have said that they recognize that we're ready to do business but they have other priorities. They're not prepared, for whatever reason. The blatant truth is, some communities may not be administratively stable enough to take on community transfers at this time.

Other communities, as I've said, are unable to agree politically or internally. Housing associations may not necessarily agree that the hamlets or other political groups should take them over. We just tell them that we need some agreements before we can conduct business with them. Those kinds of discussions are ongoing, I'm sure. But, until then, we have to be ready. There are a tremendous number of barriers. There are bureaucratic barriers, civil servants who have been very supportive, some loudly silent on the initiative, and some have been blatantly scornful of the initiative from the beginning.

I recognized that from the beginning, as a Minister. People will know from their own communities and regions that some people are actively supporting and encouraging transfers and others are strangely silent about it. Some are almost openly scornful of it. The barriers are there, some are human barriers, some are our own. There's an inability of communities to take them on administratively. There's an inability to find the kinds of personnel they want and need in order to take on these transfers. There is the internal inability at this time to move transfers such as housing. There are staffing concerns that need to be dealt with before people get serious about them. Those are the realities. The fact is we can't shove this initiative down. We can downsize the amount of money that we assign to it, but there is never going to be a day when this government refuses to do transfers. We have opened the door and we can never close the door again.