Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Yesterday, when Mr. Rabesca spoke about the difficulties in his community, one thing that I have been able to look at is that his community has been providing services on a contract basis to contractors within their community and, to me, that is a great incentive and a good way to go because we are talking about community empowerment and trying to make communities more responsible. In the long run, I see where communities hand over services to contractors where work can be done more efficiently.

However, the community of Rae-Edzo has been experiencing difficulties because they cannot deliver an adequate amount of service for the amount of funding they are receiving. Reading through some documentation that I have been provided, they are receiving the lowest per capita contribution of any community in the Northwest Territories. They have brought this to the attention of the department through a letter of last January, about a year ago, and again this year.

One of the problems that community has, is they face two particular problem areas. One, they contract their services out and hence they do not get funded the same as other communities do. The second problem they have is really two communities, quite a distance apart. Therefore, they have to supply services to two communities and they almost have to duplicate their infrastructure. The concern in all this is, first of all, they are not getting funded according to the community themselves to the appropriate level.

A question I have of the Minister is, what are they doing to resolve this because they have been dealing with the Minister for some time? The second question I have in all is, Rae-Edzo seems to me, the proper way to go. They are being punished because they have been running an efficient service by contracting it out to other people, running it on an economical basis, economizing as much as possible.

I wonder if the Minister could address the two questions for me: when are they going to resolve the problem of underfunding for Rae-Edzo because they have taken the initiative in a sense of trying to do things in what I consider the proper way and they are being penalized by funding because of that, but secondly, why is the department not looking at this and saying hey, that is great, we should institute and look at cost-savings in other communities and make communities more responsible?