Thank you, Madam Chair. I do not know how else to explain that. I do not think that if the Member does not understand what I am saying now, then he will never get it. I have tried to explain in question period the other day and tonight in the Minister's statement that we are very

confident of the cost savings, very significant cost savings. Maybe I could just summarize once again.

During the time that we were examining the whole Keewatin resupply program, and this was as a result of the threat of the port of Churchill closing and the rail line shutting down, we found out that it presently costs the shipping company 20 cents to ship a litre of fuel into the Keewatin, on average. At the time they were asked for a quote on how much it would cost them if they went through direct resupply, and that is from an eastern port directly to the communities. Right now it costs 23 cents, at the time they told us if they did direct resupply it would cost 5.6 cents a litre. If you multiply that by the 30 million litres a year that are used in the Keewatin, it does not take a lot of math to figure out these are more than significant savings that we cannot afford to ignore. That is exactly what I have done. I am not ignoring them. As I said the issues have been brought up as concerns in the communities I will be dealing with.

I am going to a meeting in six days in Arviat, with the hamlet, hosted by the deputy mayor, Mr. King I believe, to discuss their two main issues. One is the environmental aspect which is the location of the pipeline, and that I am very confident that we can fix. We can deal with that. The other issue they have is the lack of frequency of deliveries when we go to the freighter system. This is probably a bit more difficult to answer. It is a system used by the rest of the eastern Arctic at present, by the rest of Baffin Island and the northern parts of the Keewatin, and I think the way that we can try to work around that, is to make sure that people are well aware of deadlines, they have easy procedures to use when they are making arrangements for shipping, et cetera. I guess in a sense it amazes me to hear the Member spends so much time talking about the lack of spending or capital in his region in effect, rejecting $7 million worth of capital work that we are proposing to do this through the pipeline. I do not get it. I do not understand that, but that is the best I can explain.

In terms of how are we going to inform potential proponents, we have advertised in the Kivalliq News newspaper recently and we will be holding a pre-proposal conference on November 4, 1997, there we will be discussing the projects with those parties who may be interested in the project and would like to seek advice on technical matters and explore how the project may impact on future fuel supply and delivery contracts in that region. That is how we are dealing with that.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I just wanted to say again that I understand that the Member believes that we did not consult enough or take enough time to do it. I have been working on this issue for almost two years, right from day one this was a file on my desk. We have given over one year for detailed consultations, and it will never be enough, I think we could consult forever and we will never get consensus. We will never make everybody happy, but what we can do, what I am going to do is to meet with the people personally who are concerned and try to deal with them. I will go to their communities, I will talk to them face to face, and I will try to deal with their concerns. Then again, I know that I cannot make everybody happy, but at some point in time we have to make a decision. We can consult forever but I think we talked again in the beginning about making difficult choices, difficult decisions and we have done that in terms of what we had to do with the budget, with layoffs and so on and I see that as an extension of carrying out our responsibility. The NTCL press release, I do not have a lot to offer as

comment on that other than, as far as I am concerned, there was no proposal to reduce costs, et cetera.

I think what happened more or less, is after we had made the decision to open the field, make it possible for competition to come in, or for them to put together a competitive proposal which they do not now, although the service may be good now, it is not a competitive process. It is in essence, sole sourced or negotiated contract that we have with them that was supposed to end in 1993. We made the decision to end four years later than we said we would. We made that decision some months ago, and then it was after the fact that the company came forward and said we would like you to reconsider keeping the carrier of choice and this is a way we could reduce costs. It is after the fact. It is after we said we would level the playing field. You have company good intentions, good people and so forth, but after the fact coming over and saying, let us try to make up let us try to keep it the way it is. It was too late, the decision had been made.

Thank you, Madam Chairperson. On a review of the Minister for Department of Public Works and the Housing Corporation, and the Deputy Premier of the government some of the initiatives brought forward by the Minister included the Project 2000, the user pay/user say initiative and also he is doing a review on the privatization of the POL. I would like to follow up on some of these areas. There have been some criticisms on the Project 2000, I wonder if the Minister could update us on the status of the Project 2000? Has it accomplished what he wanted it to accomplish? Is it going to be continued next year? In my riding I guess the demand out stripped the number of or allocation of funds available under Project 2000.

Yes, Madam Chairperson. The project in my opinion is very successful. I believe the number now is 600 extra households that have been assisted to-date with this ambitious plan and that we are on track and we are continually trying to improve and work out the wrinkles on the project. So yes, it has been successful and we are going to carry it through to the end.

Thank you, Madam Chairperson. Following along on the Minister's portfolio under the Housing Corporation. Recently there was a transfer from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation turning over the management, operation and maintenance, property management and ownership of different Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation units and mortgages held by that corporation. Included in those in my community would be the Co-op housing and the Aakuluk daycare building. I wonder if the Minister could let us know how the negotiations have gone to date. Has it been completed? Have the corporation taken over many units across the territories? What is the status on that transfer? Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. The Housing Corporation signed a 40-year agreement with CMHC to take over the social housing portfolio this past year. I think the signing of that has given us a bit more flexibility. However, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation has retained some of the responsibilities including the holding of the long term mortgages which includes the daycare centre that the Member speaks of. I have made enquiries. I have written a letter on the Member's behalf to the CMHC asking about the status of that, but I do not have it in front of me right now.

Thank you. I will just move off the Housing Corporation. I would like to say I supported the Project 2000. I think it is a good initiative. I think the transfer of the social housing agreement that has been made by the Minister on his initiative should be congratulated. I would like to move on now under Department of Public Works and Services. One of the initiatives that has been initiated by the Deputy Premier, the Minister for Department of Public Works, has been the user pay/user say initiative. Some of the information that I have available to me on that says that in most cases it has been very successful, but there has been some mixed results with the amounts being transferred to some departments not being enough based on the amount that each department paid out. I wonder if the Minister could update us on that initiative under his portfolio. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Under the user pay/user say initiative, as Members will recall this is one area where the Department of Public Works had the responsibility for paying for leases, power bills, light bills for all government facilities whether they be for education, for health et cetera. As part of our user say/user pay initiative which basically the concept is that we give the managers the ability to manage by giving them the resources, we have handed over $23 million to departments for them to buy these services on their own mostly from the private sector.

The Department of Public Works and Services has I think done an amazing job in the few months that it took them to put this very difficult and time consuming project together. In my opinion, there has been some wrinkles, but generally the department has done a superb job.

I would move on now to the issue of POL. The Minister undertook a contract to study the privatization of POL. That report has not come forward. There are a couple of issues regarding the privatization of the POL that I am not sure of. I would like those clarified. The situation in the Keewatin with the resupply has been mentioned in this House two different times over every session that we have sat on over the last two years. I have a question concerning that. I wonder the numbers, the monies of the savings on this resupply that the Minister mentioned, I think it is $30 million or $60 million. Are those scrutinized numbers? Who crunched those numbers? Was that an outside agency that actually evaluated those numbers. Do we have some type of substantiation on the figures? If the Minister could confirm indeed that this resupply using the pipeline instead of the barge, is that a separate issue from the Rankin Inlet tank farm that was deferred before because of decisions made in this House? Are both linked? Thank you.

Madam Chair, I think the only linkage is the fact that they deal with fuel and the supply of fuel for the Keewatin region, the Keewatin resupply and the pipeline project that we have been talking about came as a result of investigations of the government into options. The reason that we started that investigation is because there was a very real threat or danger of the Port of Churchill tank farm not being available and CN Rail had actually made an announcement that they would be closing the rail line. As it turned out, it did not happen. The rail line was bought by another company.

The pipelines, et cetera are the product of that, rather than privatization. As for the numbers, the estimates that the Department of Public Works and Services used are in these types are what are called Class D estimates. Those are the best estimates that we can get using the best independent technical people in those fields. I asked the department about how confident are we of these numbers. Although it is difficult to say exactly, Class D estimates for public works and services have something like 98 percent accuracy rate.