It is good to hear that something is finally happening that will be beneficial to these communities. It would be good to be kept up to date on this because every time that I travel into these communities -- which I will be doing soon, after this session is over -- it's one of the first concerns that people raise; what is going on with the telephone and fax systems.

It will really come in handy for the smaller communities because nowadays everyone uses a fax. Whenever you write a letter you fax it and everybody gets it instantly. There they have to wait for their mail and they don't have a regular mail system into the small communities. They have to depend on when the next charter is going into the communities, it could be a few days, it could be a week or 10 days. Their communication system is very bad, it is very poor.

Nowadays there is instant communication and it would really help. One of the examples is that whenever a Minister goes into a small community -- especially Finance -- there might be a situation like the one I described with Mr. Pollard, where he wanted to use a fax but there wasn't one, and it might cause some problems that way.

I want to move on to another concern I have in Fort Simpson. The village of Fort Simpson was told last fall that they had to pay quite a substantial amount of money for heating the recreation complex. Originally there was a steam plant that provides heat to the school, Deh Cho hall, and the Bompas hall. There was a study done and they were saying that there was excess heat wasted there. So when the recreation complex was built there was an extension built to provide steam heat to the recreation centre.

The recreation complex used this system. They put in the real complex system for heating with pipes and values and all kinds of bells and whistles. It cost a substantial amount of money to put this whole system in there, to make use of the excess steam heat. But last year, the department had informed the village that they had to pay a large amount of money for the heat. The village did not anticipate that and, therefore, did not budget for it. There was a concern that was raised to me about that.

I would like to ask the Minister if he is aware of this situation. And I would like to know if the department has met with the village on this point? And if so, what was the result of that meeting? Thank you.