Thank you, Madam Chair. We have enhanced our communication effort and we have formed an interdepartmental communication working group, developed a government style guide and guidelines for government communications, introduced a new employee newsletter, introduced the new government home page on the Internet, coordinated the efforts for department's web sites and establishment of web guidelines and standards, developed a government media relations program and initial work on the crisis communication plan for improving communication in emergency situations.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Yes, we have been doing that as well. I myself attended the Press Club in Ottawa and gave what they call a morning breakfast and evening night, NWT night. It was well attended and it went over very well. We will be also going into other provincial jurisdictions, meeting with other premiers and getting press out of that as well.

Thank you, Madam Chair. This was my first Team Canada trip, and no, we did not sign any contracts.

Thank you, Madam Chair. We had an opportunity to talk about that on this Team Canada trip with the Prime Minister. Team Canada trips are driven by the federal government and we, as Premiers of all provincial jurisdictions, are invited to participate. We have more involvement now because we help put the agenda together and things like that. In the meeting we had, we talked about, and it has not been confirmed yet, the possibility of having the next Team Canada trip in the fall instead of in January. That would be the fall of 1998, and it would go to Russia, Poland, and the Ukraine. I think for us in the Northwest Territories, there is good potential in those areas, a great potential in Russia because of our expertise, our building technology. There is no country in the world that has better building technology than the Northwest Territories does. We already have businesses doing business over there. We can have more if there was a way of guaranteeing payments. So there are issues to be addressed with those governments. I followed up on this past trip, the main reason for going was a personal commitment to the Prime Minister that I would attend. I kept my word. I did attend. I did go for two weeks. We cemented our relationships with other provincial jurisdictions during the two weeks. We also met many business people. There may be possibilities of subcontracts to other major contractors, especially out of Alberta. I think it is good that Canada goes and shows the world that they are interested in doing business, and it looks good for Canada. So if I can do my part for my country, I will. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. As Members know, there was a transfer from the official language unit out to the communities. The communities had requested that official language funding be transferred into the regions so the communities can use it and that is what we did. We moved the money out so that communities themselves can be in charge of their own official languages. We are also working on transferring the official language unit to the Department of Education, Culture and Employment where it rightfully should be, in education, so hopefully that work will be done soon. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I think that traditionally the turnover in government is around 20 percent and because of downsizing and amalgamation, we realized there had been quite a turnover in government. We had a good program for our employees, a compensation program. We also have a good program for employees seeking employment if they were laid off. They would have a high priority status. So we are working with our employees to ensure that those who want to continue to work with the territorial government, we try to give them every opportunity we can.

We are also looking at the human resource functions and the decentralization of those functions. It is widely supported and generally effective. There remains a need for a small central group of people to provide specialized expertise and coordination of policies and organization-wide initiatives. The central human resource group would include the remaining positions in the Personnel Secretariat. The role of this human resource group would be as support for the departments. The human resource managers from departments have discussed the type of work the central human resource group would be doing and made recommendations that the senior management committee will review, in the near future. Some potential functions for the central human resource group would be to support human resource planning for the GNWT, provide overall coordination of affirmative action planning, coordinate casual summer student hiring, staffing, support the human resource part of the transition to two territories, provide specialized expertise for the staffing process, coordinate management development and succession planning, review and revise policies and procedures as needed.

So, that is kind of the direction we are going. We talked about that earlier, about the personnel staff who were left. Thank you.