Thank you, Mr. Speaker. This issue started many, many months ago. It started out with directions from Cabinet to negotiate with the Dene/Metis for supply of a maintenance facility, and operations and maintenance of air tanker CL-215s in the Northwest Territories. That process took approximately 90 days. I believe it was early December when, after that process did not succeed, we issued a request for proposal. We did everything possible up to that time, but the time was limited. We did everything possible to change whatever requirements we could in the RFP so it wasn't the same the standards that Con Air had written for this government previously.

We went to proposal with the best documentation we had. After the request for proposals closed, we had people from Renewable Resources, Economic Development, and DPW reviewing the proposals. In the end, they came up with a set of standards that would be acceptable to this government, as well as the contractor that was successful. Those are the standards that we're using. There will be more changes to the standards for this government in the future. Thank you.