Thank you, Mr. Chairman. There has been much discussion on traditional knowledge and the Minister talked earlier about making publications available on traditional knowledge. The Minister talked about if it was just going to be used for skeptics to jump on it that there would not be much need for it. I would suggest there is a thirst for that knowledge. I think it is fair to say that most times traditional knowledge is referred to, or at least when I hear it referred to, it is always in the context of a question. Well, what is it? Mr. Chairman, I believe the first inhabitants of this land would definitely have some knowledge worth sharing and if not among the newcomers, certainly with their own people. I believe there is a large amount of knowledge that is being lost on a regular basis. If the people of the north have been able to survive in an environment such as we have, I believe there is some extremely good knowledge that is worth sharing. I think that it would probably stand the test of the skeptics. I would certainly encourage the Minister to produce some publications, tell the general public what traditional knowledge is. Yes, there will be people jumping on it, but if it is strong it will stand up. That is the only comment I have on that.

I have a question regarding the layoffs. My question to the Minister is: how many employees have received layoff packages from the reworked department, from the three old departments and if he has a figure on how much the amalgamation of the three departments have cost on layoff packages? Thank you, Mr. Chairman.