Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Perhaps it's important that we try to deal with and try to respond to this question. The principle of the strategy, which we've been trying to accomplish here and has been discussed at length with this Legislative Assembly through the standing committees, is this: The government can no longer afford to maintain the same benefits package that was originally designed to attract public servants from southern Canada. It's time to recognize the fact that increasing numbers of northerners do have the education and do have the job opportunities within the GNWT. The change to the northern allowance is intended to de-emphasize the recreational travel and provide a fair compensation package to the people who we've all grown up with to enable our employees to meet the basic needs in the community, whether it's mortgage payments, feeding the family, et cetera.

In the process of restructuring the northern allowance package based on the principle that we can no longer afford the current package and the fact that the old package was designed primarily for a southern employee component that took place 20 or 30 years ago, we redesigned it. It's an oversimplification to use the vacation travel component and to exaggerate the percentage changes when we're talking about a cost of living allowance and not a recreational bonus. Thank you.