Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will just make a couple of remarks, and I do not mean to remind Members of the House the years of work that have been done to get to this stage, from the discussions on the concept in the early 1970's to the work leading up to the signing of the Nunavut Political Accord and the signing of the Nunavut Final Agreement. I think if there was ever a critical stage in this long process, we are at it now. I think the plan, tabled yesterday by Mr. Todd, is one that, as Mr. Picco said, a wake-up call to everyone, especially the federal government. I saw quoted in one of the papers very recently, that it is, in fact, a wake-up call to the players. I think the territorial government has been very responsible in doing this work, and I must commend the very hard work of the Division Secretariat and of the different departments in putting this very difficult work together in such a short period of time. As Mr. Todd indicated earlier, and others, a lot of the decisions and direction in the very immediate future will be made by the Interim Commissioner.

I wanted to just comment on some of the things that Mr. Steen said, and I was not going to earlier. I was thinking of just letting it slide, but I was somewhat disturbed by the seemingly derogatory tone that I heard. Maybe it was just my perception, where he, Mr. Steen continually talked about, "those people, these people and them." I wanted to remind him that just about half of the Assembly are "those people" and "them." That we are elected leaders from the Nunavut area.

I do not believe for one minute that Mr. Steen represents the rest of the western Arctic's MLAs and people in expressing some of those sentiments. I certainly hope it was just, perhaps, a difficulty in expressing them. I must say that I was offended. I will listen to comments being made by Members and have every faith in Mr. Todd in representing Cabinet in dealing with this very difficult issue in our discussions, but will jump in when I see the need to. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.