Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, the buzz words of sustainability and affordability have come up many times in debates and in the Budget Address as Mr. Todd has said, especially with regard to the pay equity situation. I have mentioned it many times and have had private conversations with the Minister on pay equity which have been quite interesting. I am wondering, when the Minister says sustainability, what does he mean by sustainability?

You have to be able to afford it, Mr. Chairman, and be able to sustain the affordability. I mean, whatever it is going to cost, you have to be able to know that you have the money in the bank to pay it over a long period of time. I am one of these politicians who does not look just for today but looks down the road. I believe, in this budget, we have tried to look into the next millennium, as we have said. It is an issue that, quite frankly, haunts me right now. I am talking very personally. I want to make an arrangement that is fair to the employees. But I am not prepared, and I do not think the people are prepared, if it is not fair and affordable, to lay off any more people and cut programs. We do not sit in the House talking about spending more money. We do not have the capacity to spend money. It is just like the bank account or your Chargex card. There is only so much you can put on it or take out of it. Really that is what we are trying to do here. We are trying to be fair, reasonable, and I hope at the end of the day, we can reach a settlement, as I said, by the end of March. I am optimistic that level heads, and reasonable and fair negotiations will prevail and common sense, at the end of the day, will prevail as to affordability, common sense, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I do agree with the analogy presented by the Minister of fair minded, level heads and your credit cards and your mortgage. That has always been my point on this issue, Mr. Chairman. That after ten years of dragging this through the courts, that it was never addressed properly by the 12th or the 11th Assembly. Mr. Todd is stuck with a situation, a fait accompli, as it were, where we lost our last challenge in court and now we had to sit at the negotiating table. Mr. Todd has tried to work out an arrangement at the table, and rightfully so. Mr. Chairman, when we look at the employees, we are looking at 98 percent being the female employee in mostly clerical and administrative positions who have been underpaid based on their classification in a gender neutral environment. Basically, what that means, Mr. Chairman, is that, indeed, a woman doing the same job as a man was being paid less than a man. There is no one in this House who would say that was fair. We went to court and we lost the case. Sometimes I feel there is a revision of history going on. I do not know what the amount is that would be retroactive and owed to 1,000 employees, 600 employees, 100 employees. It is very difficult to ask the appropriate questions on sustainability and affordability. However, after saying that Mr. Chairman, the Minister of Finance must have a figure in mind, and it is not fair for him to say what that figure is because they are in negotiations. All I am saying, Mr. Chairman, is I agree with the Minister that we had to pay the bill, like a Visa bill or a mortgage bill. It does not matter to me if that person is living in the territories or now has left. To me, that is a red herring. We still owe a debt. What the affordability factor is, is something that has to be played out. If the territorial government does not have the ability to pay the bill as presented, I would ask the Minister, you know, would the federal government, who is the 80 percent funder of this government, step in and help us out on that bill because we all know, and as the Minister of Finance knows, the federal government is also in the case now, before the courts, of their $1 billion pay equity situation. I think that a fair minded person like Mr. Todd would probably have already approached the subject with our Finance Minister. All I am saying is that we do not have the fiscal ability to pay. We have to pay something. Has he looked at other alternatives like asking the federal government for help here because as Mr. Todd knows, when he fought in the courts as the territorial government, we were ruled that we did not have jurisdiction that, indeed, human rights laws for Canada fell into place and that is why we lost our court case? If that is the case, I would see federal regulations having to incur us in that debt. So, I would ask the Minister, has he looked and talked to the Department of Finance about this issue and indeed, how much money are we looking at? You heard $70 and $80 million. I do not expect the Minister to tell me because he has a bargaining position to take. So my question to the Minister is that indeed we have a debt to pay. He has acknowledged that because we are at the negotiating table because we lost the last court case. So has he looked at other avenues to pay out this money? Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Well, Mr. Chairman, the federal government will not pay the bill. Let me repeat that for clarity purposes. The federal government will not pay the bill. The responsibility lies within the fiscal capabilities of this government and I am going to keep to my theme because I think it is the right one. We want to negotiate an arrangement. We do not need a third party telling us what to do and it has to be fair and it has to be affordable. I hope at the end of the day that everybody will see that it is necessary and where that money goes at the end of the day is irrelevant to me. I agree that there is a bill that has to be paid, we have all said that. I have said it consistently. How much more cuts and pain can

we inflict on the people of the territories? I mean, I defy anybody, including the people at the bargaining table to show me where we are going to pay for this. I am not going to talk numbers because I think it is completely inappropriate. I believe we have got a good defendable position for the position that we have laid before the union. I think it is fair and I hope at the end of the day this Legislature and others will see that, as the negotiations unfold. I do not want to at this time circumvent negotiations.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I am not trying to be antagonistic with the Minister. I am not trying to bait him into saying something that he does not want to say and I would not be able to do that, anyway, with his skill. Mr. Chairman, on the negotiations that are currently underway, it is my understanding from the Minister's questions answered in this House over the last couple of days that the negotiated settlement is at the table now because the Union of Northern Workers, who make up the major component of the pay equity situation, are negotiating their current contract. I hope, and I would like clarification perhaps from Mr. Todd, that he is not hanging the sword of damocles over the pay equity on one hand saying if you do not get a negotiated settlement on this hand I cannot do something on the other hand. To me that would not be fair negotiations. So, I would like a confirmation today from the Minister that indeed that is not occurring. Thank you.

Yes, I never saw Mr. Picco's questions as being confrontational, I just thought they were ones of clarity of information and I am dealing with that accordingly. I think it would be fair to say that my strategy is to try to negotiate both arrangements so we can put some money into the pockets of our employees, that we can afford. As I said, negotiations are underway and it would be imprudent of me to make any kind of comment as to how the negotiations are going but to say, again, you are going to hear it and hear it, we want to negotiate an arrangement that is affordable. We have placed our offer on the table and let us see how it unfolds in the coming two or three weeks. For all of our sakes, I say this in all sincerity, I genuinely hope that we can negotiate an arrangement because the consequences are far greater if we do not. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Let me address the availability of investment capital. I think my colleague would be surprised just how much disposable income is out there, even in these difficult times. I mean, I am told, and I stand to be corrected there is somewhere between $20 and $30 million a year going into RRSP's for example in the territories. That is a significant amount of investment income if we can tap even into a fraction of that. So that is on the one side. There is still a fairly healthy investment community out there and I think, I hope, they will view this very favourably. The reasonable minimum, I think we have a maximum of up to $100,000. So, I mean, if somebody formed a small company, three guys got together needed $15,000 putting $5,000 each into it, I think we would consider that the same as anything else. I only use the $10,000 just for clarity purposes to demonstrate the value of the credit. Of course on the RRSP side you have to have the window to be able to access the RRSP, but this is what I am optimistic about, it could bring about a fair amount of investment. You will notice we are pretty conservative in the way we are approaching this thing. I am saying 98/99, $1 million in tax credits up to $5 million. I think, in the year 2000-2001, gives us somewhere in the region of $35 million in new equity. So, you know, it is pretty conservative. In my discussions around, I am fairly optimistic that we will get some of this cash flowing and moving, and I hope that people in the territories will invest in their country as southerners have done and others have done. This way we get the small tax credit in to encourage them as an incentive to reduce that risk. Thank you.

Well, we have to make some assumptions and based upon where we think some of the economy is going. A lot of what we looked at, you know, because I think when we talk about the economy right now it gets a little skewed because of the price of gold. There is an assumption, and do not misunderstand me, we are very sympathetic to what is going on up there in terms of the gold industry and the mines, that is why Mr. Kakfwi and others are working hard with the mining companies. There is a small business community out there that will have an opportunity with Public/Private Partnerships, with development in Nunavut,

Well, the Northern Employment Strategy, I think, really did not get the kind of, if you want, political play it should have last year. Certainly I hope it does this year because if you look just at the first brush of the return on investment that has occurred with that Northern Employment Strategy it is really quite significant. Mr. Kakfwi's office, of course, played a very, very senior role in that along with Mr. Dent's and Ms. Thompson's, but my understanding is that we are going to continue with the program as is, maybe some minor changes, but as is. Both Mr. Kakfwi and Mr. Dent are going to provide a more detailed return on investment paper to this House before it ends. Mr. Kakfwi's office put $9.5 million, they cost-shared projects the value of $34 million. That is pretty good leverage. They created 48,000 part and full-time jobs, sorry, work weeks of employment. You know, I mean, to me that was money well spent, and I do not think there will be much change to the program that we had last year. I know there was some federal money in there and, if my memory serves me correctly, that may be not there now, but certainly we are optimistic that this program will roll out soon and hopefully we will actually do better in the coming year in terms of the target set for employment. Thank you.