Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My question is directed to the Minister responsible for Division, Mr. Todd. The issue of division is taking more and more attention by everybody. The issue I talked about in my Member's statement of trying to come up with understandable, clear information to the people to keep them up to speed and to allay any concerns. The question I would like to pose to the Minister, does he see this as an issue and how does he intend to proceed to address it? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I hope that in fact, Mr. Todd, and his two able assistants or colleagues will in fact come to be known as the three wise-men of division.

--Laughter

Hopefully, if we do this right, not the three blind mice. Mr. Speaker, my question remains, while the Minister talks of transitional documents which are important, they are not written for the average public or the average person. Could the Minister indicate how he intends to, translate that and come up with a communication plan which is so critical and as an Assembly, we have struggled with to present this kind of information in a clear and timely way to the people? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Very clearly while Mr. Todd and his colleagues have a leadership role to play, we all have an obligation and responsibility in this process. The questions that we are going to have to respond to are going to be very simple. One of the fundamental questions that I think we have to address and I would like the Minister to speak to is, the whole issue east and west. Will division have a negative effect on services and programs in the two new territories? I think that is one of the most fundamental assurances that we have to try to provide people If the Minister could just briefly speak to that particular critical issue. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, in my Member's statement I referred to government red tape and its impact on the people of the territories. Mr. Speaker, we heard over the summer there was some work being done on regulatory reform. My question would be directed to the Minister responsible for Regulatory Reform, I believe it is the Honourable Mr. Kakfwi. I would like to know if this regulatory reform addresses some of the areas of aboriginal people when it comes to the natural food and the process and that ability to

produce things that would be saleable within the territories and probably elsewhere? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The regulatory reform initiative that was launched by Cabinet last March has done some work to date. As Members know, the government has said two years ago when our new terms began that we were going to put the focus on the private sector for the creation of jobs. To that end, on our part we recognize that there may be a lot of what you would call red tape and artificial barriers that would prevent small business initiatives from creating the necessary momentum to be successful. This regulatory reform initiative has been set up. We have set up a small office and several projects have been set up in the last few months that would look at different sectors of our economy and the businesses that have potential to grow and to look at the different sectors and see how the present environment is perceived by those sectors whether it is really a jungle or whether there are major obstacles in the way of growth in the private sector because of bureaucracy and regulatory entanglement. When we look at small businesses, being initiated by aboriginal peoples it is one of the sectors we are currently looking at. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. That is good news for many of the small businesses especially when we have a lot of natural products in the north that we see at local events such as northern games, but as soon as those products go up for sale we run into problems with meeting codes and different regulations. In particular, can the Minister inform me of any work that is going on within this initiative to address the local and northern products we have? For example, I used in my story the smoked fish or the meat or local hunts. I know we have to meet some pretty large regulations right now when it comes to any kind of meats. Can the Minister inform me of that? Thank you.

My Speaker, some of the issues that the Member has raised are in fact outside of the regime of this government. For instance, in regulation of what you call the red meat issue, we have an abundance of, for instance, caribou meat in the Northwest Territories and other wild meat. It is under the legislative authority and jurisdiction of the federal government that meat wild, or domestic, is exported and licensed for consumption, resale and marketing. But having said that, as a Minister, I have been working for sometime on trying to resolve some of these impediments to the export of red meat from the Northwest Territories to southern markets. I had a meeting recently with the Minister of Agriculture and we have, I think, basically resolved the issue of egg marketing. We have signed an agreement that says we will commit to going to our respective Cabinets to ensure that the Northwest Territories will become part of the egg marketing agency that we have been excluded from previously. I believe that is going to be resolved after a long history of conflict, argument and dissension amongst us mainly between the southern producers and ourselves here in the north. On the red meat issue, it is an area of work that again needs resolution. We have no particular, quick solutions to that although the Minister, Mr. Vanclief, has agreed to put our officials to work on it with a view of trying to resolve the difficulties that we have in the Northwest Territories to recent selling caribou meat, muskox meat and other meats from the Northwest Territories to buyers in the south. Some of the difficulties we acknowledge are international, for instance buyers in Europe and the United States. Having said that, we have agreed to work on that together. Thank you.