Thank you, Mr. Speaker. First of all, we are all responsible for the division of the Territories, although I do have the lead in terms of trying to put together a consensus in this House, Cabinet, and the Ordinary Members as to what the position of the government is, as we move forward towards negotiating the division of the two Territories and seeking the appropriate resources.

As I mentioned earlier, I believe, and in questions asked of me by Mr. Miltenberger yesterday or the day before, we currently have the NIC report, Footprints in the Snow 2, which has provided a model for the new Nunavut government that we have reacted to, and indicated what our assessment of it was. We are one party in the arrangement on the Nunavut side. There are two other parties on the arrangement on the Nunavut side, that is NTI, that has a legal obligation to the Nunavut Act, and the federal government, that ultimately will pay the bill. We are still waiting for, with a great deal of anticipation, the response from both those parties, I hope a comprehensive response from both those parties, to determine if there are similarities and parallels with the response that we have done to the NIC report. It is our hope that, once these responses are in place, we will then be in a position to negotiate or reach a consensus on what kind of core structural framework will be in place for Nunavut. It is premature at this time for us to know what that is, because we do not have all the information on the table, and that is the two responses from the two other parties.

On the western side, at the present time, we are making the assumption, because there is nothing to compare it to, that the status quo would be a starting point, if you want, for negotiations. Now I think it would be fair to say that while we are waiting for the NTI and the federal government response to the Footprints in the Snow 2, we are also looking at what we think we can do as a pre-implementation of the division of the Territories. We cannot sit idle and wait until April 1, 1999, and I have said this consistently, and assume that somebody is going to wave a magic wand and everything is going to fall into place. We have a responsibility to at least develop some form of pre-implementation plan that will put some framework in place to ensure that the two new governments can be up and running effective April 1, 1999.

So, I have instructed my deputy, and those involved in the Division Secretariat to do a greater review of the Footprints report, to determine from that report what we think we can realistically accomplish, and within that, what we believe is affordable, because the issue at the end of the day is going to be affordability, and we are moving on that exercise right now. Once that has been concluded, and hopefully by that time of course, we will have the response from the two other parties, we will then share that information with the Legislature, again seek consensus because that is what this is all about, and try to bring in some pre-implementation plans in the late part of this year, and the beginning of 1998. I will be providing my honourable colleague and others in the Budget Address on Monday with a much clearer picture of what our position is. At the present time, that is where it stands. Thank you.