Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, a large meteor shower will bombard the earth in the very near future.

-- Laughter

The specific cloud is called a leonit meteor storm. It is forecasted to arrive April 1, 1999. No, it is forecasted to arrive in 1999, Mr. Speaker. When it does, the incidence of meteors will increase ten thousand fold. The shower will particularly threaten all man made objects in orbit around the earth today. In order to take evasive action with satellites such as turning the antennas to present the smallest cross sections or change in orbit, the operators need to know more about the shower. They need to be able to predict the storms as accurately as possible. The world leading experts in this field are Canadian scientists. They operate from a number of universities. In order for them to better gather data to support their work they need to have a radar deployed, ideally north of 68 degrees, to be able to track the leonit storm continuously.

The radar is a BHF radar. The data it would gather would help with the predictive models for meteor showers. There is an urgency, Mr. Speaker, in this requirement. Ideally, the radar should be purchased and used in England in 1997 and set up north of the 68 degrees in 1998-99. The SWR 503 by Rathion Canada is ideally suited to the task. The radar cost is in the vicinity of $2 million. The total cost of the project is estimated at $5.5 million. Mr. Speaker, a fraction of this would be spent in the Northwest Territories. A number of NWT sites, such as Inuvik, are well suited to this project. And, Mr. Speaker, many times this government has said that we will facilitate and work to attract investment in the Northwest Territories, so it goes without saying that very shortly I will be writing a letter in support of this project to try to get as much benefit to the Northwest Territories as possible. Thank you.

-- Applause