Thank you, Madam Chair. I completely agree with Mr. Steen that we are embarking on a new initiative, a $16 million initiative. If you put that whole initiative aside, right now this government spends millions and millions of dollars on existing contracts. The ones that he stipulated about are prime examples of why we have to monitor and make sure that our departments monitor properly. But also, right in the tender document and the drafting of that tender document and I will double check on this. There is supposed to be, very clearly, that if you put in there that you are going to hire so many local people, so many northern people, and then if you do not do it, the hammer was supposed to be there so that we can lift the Business Incentive Policy, cancel the contract, or impose a penalty on the contractor to give the government a hammer in order to make sure that the contractors abide by the rules. In the contracts that Mr. Steen referred to, those are all tendered contracts. None are

negotiated contracts. I recall when I was a Minister of DPW and Housing Corporation, I had requests from communities to bring in one person from the south in a negotiated contract. I completely refused to allow them to do it. You negotiate a contract with this government, they have to be 100 percent northern content on that contract. It has to be. Local first, regional, then territorial. I completely agree that contractors have to take the initiative. If they continue to want to benefit from the policies and programs of this government, they have to take the initiative and look around the Northwest Territories. Not only in Yellowknife or Hay River if the highway construction is in this area, but in the Inuvik area, because back in the '70s, when the oil prices were higher and there was lot of action in the Beaufort region, there were many people, including myself out of this region, that worked in the Beaufort. The favour should be returned. If we need equipment operators and they are not available in this region, we should pull them out of the Beaufort region and other regions of the Northwest Territories.

Recall through our socio-economic agreements with BHP mines that the pick up points will be including Inuvik area, Cambridge area I believe, Fort Simpson, Fort Smith and all areas in the Northwest Territories, not only just the surrounding areas of that development. If we expect private sector to do that when we sign agreements with them, then we should be doing that with our own contractors to ensure that the job gets done and it gets done by northerners. Thank you.