Thank you, Madam Chair. In looking at the budget book, the answer to Mr. Picco's question may lie on page 14-33, which is work performed on behalf of third parties. You will notice under official languages, French, there has been a significant drop in the funding the federal government is providing for French language services. That would more than likely be where the cut that Mr. Picco is referring to would have come.

As I said, that is completely funded by the federal government and not by the Government of the Northwest Territories. So what you are seeing on page 14-33 is money that comes from the federal government and is administered by this government.

In response to Mr. Steen's question, I think that we do have a priority to try to preserve the languages and cultures of the North. Members need to remember that the previous agreement with Canada for official languages totalled $38 million over three years. The current agreement is for $18 million over three years. That is $20 million we lost in that agreement over three years. Because of the timing when that agreement was reached, it was more than half-way through the first year. So a good portion of that $18 million was used up in the first year of the agreement and in years two and three, we are having to take significantly bigger cuts because the previous government was not prepared for the magnitude of the cuts that were to come. As it stands, today we have far less money that is coming to us for official languages from the federal government. Given that, I would note the efforts the department has gone through to take person year cuts at the administration level and the efforts we have done to try to minimize the numbers of teaching positions across the North being cut.

You will see that in the language bureau, the effort is to make as few cuts as possible. Unfortunately, we have very limited funds for official languages in comparison to previous years. Regarding the two half positions that were eliminated, we didn't have much in the way of a choice. I recognize the Member's concern and we will do what we can to re-examine the situation but we are facing some real difficulty delivering services in the way that we did, given the funding that is available. Thank you, Madam Chair.