Thank you. Mr. Ng.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I can assure the honourable Member that will not be the case. That is why we set it out in the business planning cycle and listed it as a strategic initiative of the department. Even though I may not be here, there are other Members of this House, Members of the Cabinet and the Premier who will ensure that any incoming Cabinet Member will take up the initiatives and the staff that is within the department will make sure that is completed. Thank you.

Thank you. Oral questions. The honourable Member for Yellowknife Centre, Mr. Ootes.

Thank you, Mr. Ootes. The honourable Minister responsible for FMB, Mr. Todd.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I think I addressed that question in a response to either Mr. Ootes' or Mrs. Groenewegen's questions earlier where I indicated that the Executive had budgeted somewhere in the region of $400,000 for this work I believe. Thank you.

Thank you. Oral questions. Supplementary, Mr. Ootes.

Thank you. That was your first supplementary question. Mr. Todd.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I am trying to answer his question as distinctly as I can. I simply do not understand it so I will try again and maybe my colleague could be a little more specific. What I indicated in my response to Mrs. Groenewegen on September 17th was that the dollar value of the proposal with respect to the cost associated with the prime contractor was $264,883 and that including the sub-consultants thereafter it was a total of $389,250. It was anticipated that the cost of developing these strategies could be as high as $500,000 and this not only included costs of the RFP but costs associated with releasing the consultants' report, public discussion and public input as well as some of the work we have to do in Ottawa. Thank you.

Thank you. Oral questions. Supplementary, Mr. Ootes.

Thank you. I would like to remind all Members and Ministers to be concise when asking and responding to questions. Mr. Todd.

I do not know if the Member was in the House or not but I thought I had indicated but I will try again. Now there is two or three parts to this overall economic strategy. It is a strategy being put together to convince Ottawa to have a new fiscal relationship with the Western Territory to enable us; one, to get into a new tax window as it relates to non-renewable resources; two, to build a public infrastructure to support the non-renewable resources; and three, to give the kind of economic contribution to the private sector and to others to go about doing this work. Mr. Bailey has no involvement with the transportation strategy. Mr. Bailey is working on the component and the details necessary to argue the case for a new fiscal relationship with the federal government. He is re-examining some of the programs we currently are doing to see if they are effective and can they be changed accordingly. In the meantime, Mr. Antoine and his department, are working on an overall implementation plan for four critical roads which are a critical part of the overall strategy that we are trying to develop to get into the tax window, to develop a non-renewable resource industry, to build roads to resources and to ensure that we become less dependent on the federal government and we can create an economic activity that will benefit all northerners. The only relationship between Mr. Bailey and Mr. Antoine is in the overall picture that I am coordinating. Thank you.

Thank you. Final supplementary, Mr. Ootes.

Thank you. The honourable Minister for the Financial Management Board, Mr. Todd.

There has been significant public consultation on the transportation side of things done by Mr. Antoine. I have had recent meetings with some of the aboriginal leadership about two weeks ago in terms of the overall direction that we are going. I just met with the Yellowknife Chamber of Commerce which was a full-house on Friday, explaining where we are heading with this issue. We have recently sent invitations and have been asked to speak to the Alternatives North group, Ecology North, the NWT Chamber of Mines, the NWT Chamber of Commerce, et cetera. There are consultations by myself, who is charged with a political responsibility to move forward on this. We will be undertaking many of these consultations as we get a little closer to a draft in which people can respond to.

In the meantime, in the early stages of development of this, I did ask a number of well-respected leaders right across the territories if they would meet with me on an informal basis to ensure that I was on the right track. I am pleased to say I did have a meeting with Ms. Cournoyea, who heads up the Inuvialuit Development Corporation, Mr. Willard Hagen, who is involved with the Gwich'in, Mr. Mike Vaydik, from the Chamber of mines, Mr. Gordy Stewart from the Chamber of Commerce, Mr. Danny Gaudet who is involved in the Deline area and Mr. Darryl Beaulieu and Mr. Alan Vaughan two weeks ago in an effort to seek the litmus test to see if we were heading in the right direction.

It certainly is our intention, once we put pen to paper and have a draft as to where we should head, that we would have further discussions on this important initiative and move forward in an orderly way in our discussions with Mr. Martin and Ms. Stewart in the coming months. Thank you.

Thank you. Oral questions. Honourable Member for Hay River, Mrs. Groenewegen.

Thank you. I hear a couple of questions. Mr. Todd.

I appreciate my honourable colleague's comments and in particular kind comments with my hopefully quick response to try and answer important aspects of this economic strategy. It certainly is our intention to try to fund this thing internally. It came about primarily, as I said before, because it became clear... I want to stay back a little bit. In my earlier discussions with my Cabinet colleagues and Mr. Martin in particular, he indicated to me 18 months ago that one, we have to balance the budget and two, we need to get two new formulas, east and west. Of course, I was pushing very aggressively at that time the need to try and get into the tax window to generate more revenues for the territories as a whole and make us less dependent. I recognized in the early stages when we were negotiating the two new formulas that we were asking for more money.

In these times, in the late 90's, it is a difficult thing to do, when everybody else is working on less money and deficit strategies. The timing of the issue really comes together with respect to the fact we balanced our budget, that we have two new formulas, we were close to an agreement on two new formulas, and we had an agreement in principle several months back on two new formulas, which then gave us the opportunity to move forward on the most important initiative and that was to get into the tax window. When we start to examine the tax window, it came abundantly clear that a whole variety of other things had to come in behind it. The tax window primarily relates to the non-renewable resource industry.

Therefore, to get the non-renewable resource industry moving more aggressively, there was a need to strategically place some money in a variety of areas to bring about if you want, a coordinated effort and a coordinated approach to how this government was going to move forward in finding a new fiscal relationship with the federal government. This was not something that came out of the blue. This came about because of discussions that were underway with Mr. Martin and because we had resolved both of the issues, balancing the budget and the two new formulas. It then became evident that if we are going to, certainly for myself, if I am going to leave office as I am in March 31, 1999, we wanted to make sure that we put together a blueprint for future governments that they may wish to enact upon, which would provide them with more dollars and more revenues and make them less dependent on the federal transfer payments. I hope that answers the question.

Thank you. Supplementary, Mrs. Groenewegen.