Mr. Speaker, we take responsibility for managing these positions and the people who occupy the positions. We believe at this time that the position here in the west is one that can be filled by realigning it with the work done by the committee; and, because of the distance to Iqaluit and the volume of work they do in the Inuktitut language, we felt that we should not disrupt that work at this time. The Member should keep in mind the reductions the government is making is just a beginning, and that is part of the reason that I made the comments earlier that I did, that we are having difficulty suggesting even small reductions at this time within the Department of Justice.

The federal government is just beginning -- in my view -- to make reductions. They have already made some very strong suggestions to us, there are some actual reductions being made to a number of programs. We are having difficulty in finalizing figures for programs which have been put back on the drawing board. It is very possible, over the course of the next six months -- perhaps very early after the next election -- that we will be facing additional cuts to vital services, such as the language services that we presently deliver, simply because there will not be enough money to continue operating the way we have.

So, we have done this because we think that we can manage without these positions at this time. We know that we are going to continually have to, as managers, realign and reorganize because of the uncertainty of funding levels by the federal government overall, and in specific programs as well. This is just the beginning, in my opinion, so it is very important for Members to keep that in mind. Thank you.