I think Mr. Henry may be alluding to early on some of the previous studies that were done by some of the renowned Canadian auditing firms. I believe there was two done at the time where this government did one, previous government I believe, and I think the federal government did say this is what we think the cost of division is going to be. These numbers I believe, if my memory serves me correct, were somewhere around anywhere from $350 to $500 million. There is no question that those two reports were out there. But these reports were done at a time when it was not clear as to exactly what the new Nunavut government was going to look like. The NIC report which came forward gave a very detailed description of how the new Nunavut government should unfold. That then provided us and others like the Interim Commissioner to cost that government, and that is what we strove to do because I remember a year ago I said the next step after the Footprints in the Snow 2 documents came out was for us to cost that exercise with our partners.
In our costing we have determined that on a transitional basis, one time costs in an ideal world, it would be an additional $136 million. But what I did say, in my opening comments and have said since then, is we should focus on the action plan. The reason that I say focus on the action plan and to reach a consensus on it because once consensus is reached on what we think we can realistically accomplish that will determine what the costs are. The $136 million, I said publicly last week, was not a request for that money from the federal government. It was to demonstrate to the federal government in an ideal world what the shortfall was. So, you need to bring the players to the table, the Interim Commissioner, western coalition, ourselves and the federal government to reach consensus on a course and an action plan that we think we can realistically accomplish in the next 18/20 months. Then cost that. I do not know what that is going to be yet because we still have not had the meeting, and we still have not reached consensus.
The difference between what was done before and what is done now - I just want to say it again. Again, I am trying to keep my answers short was because at the time it was done by Peat Marwick, or some of those national firms, there really was not the accurate detailed information that we now have. I am fairly comfortable that the numbers that we now have on the table - we are going to put on the table down the road as it relates to two new formulas are easily substantiated because of the backup and because of the detail that we now have. I do not know whether that answers my honourable colleague's question, but I hope it does.