Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I am not sure, but
I will try to give it a go because I have asked the same question that my honourable colleague has raised with me, et cetera. The cost of living index is used to update information and provide us with the base for northern allowance, et cetera and is determined, to some extent, on the information we received from Statistics Canada. Statistics Canada surveys NWT communities once every three years to determine the value of the food basket, the basket of goods, air transportation, et cetera. Based on this index, employees receive the difference between the basket of foods purchased in Yellowknife versus the basket of food purchased in their home community. That is the first index. The second index is on a seven-day advanced airfare out of the community. The index is used on the flat amount being paid on airfare for a family. Yellowknife is used as a base for both those indexes. The two indexes produce a rate for each community that is a multiple of the Yellowknife based rate. The amounts produced by each index are added together to produce the Northern Allowance. In 1997-98, four changes were made to the Northern Allowance for the 1998 round of collective bargaining. We updated the value of the basket of goods in line with the consumer price index. We updated the cost of the living index based on the recent Statistics Canada information and we updated the transportation index based on the current airfare costs. This is a fairly lengthy response, Mr. Speaker, so I hope that is all right with everybody.