Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The Yellowknife office space plan was developed over a period of several months because it was such a complex issue. It was felt there was a need to find a way to cushion the impact of continuing changes to the size of the public service. As we move toward division, our need for office space will diminish. We are expecting, once division is completed and two new territories have been created, that the economy will start to rebound. In the meantime, we did not want to do anything to further damage the real estate market by cancelling a lot of leases and pulling ourselves into a lot of owned buildings that needed major capital investments to make them continuing good office space. The reason we went in the direction that we did, and the reason we made the recommendations to Cabinet, was we felt we had to get some of the office space currently on the market off the market. That was the reason for recommending the sale of the Laing Building which would remove 60,000 square feet from the Yellowknife office space inventory immediately. There are two departments that occupy that building, the Executive and the Financial Management Board Secretariat, and it is 60,000 square feet. However, they only require 38,000 square feet of space. It is our intention to go to a call for proposals to accommodate those departments outside of the Laing Building. Over time, we will reduce our inventory by 90,000 square fee, I believe it is by the year 2005. We will do that by dropping leases as they reach their termination. We will do it in a way that is least damaging to the economy. The reality is that, when we take a look at the number of jobs that have been lost as a result of government restructuring and the potential reductions that will continue to occur, they have largely been in Yellowknife. The vast majority of those jobs have been lost from Yellowknife even though there have been
reductions at the community level. I think it is critical to recognize that the health of your capital also has an impact on the health of the rest of the communities in the jurisdiction. If the real estate market is devastated in the capital, the economy of the entire region suffers. This was the reason for selling the Laing Building and eliminating it from the office space inventory. Thank you.