Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Mackenzie River Basin Trans-boundary Agreement set out some principles for the establishment of a co-management board, which consists of Saskatchewan, Alberta, British Columbia, Yukon and Northwest Territories for a total of about 13 members on the board. A secretariat has also been set up in the interim to help support this board.
At this time, there is an interim secretariat located in the Environment Canada offices in Edmonton. It is our intention that once a quorum of board members have been appointed to this board, their first meeting hopefully which will happen sometime in November, they will begin to discuss probably administrative housekeeping issues such as the issue of where to locate the office of the secretariat.
I believe we should be able to see this board and conduct its first meeting in November. It has been the view of the governments and agencies involved that the issue of where to locate the offices of this board and secretariat should be left to the board, once it is established, to decide. Thank you.