No question on that, Mr. Chairman, thank you. I believe the Minister had mentioned that there is still $6 million outstanding. Is that $6 million the government's estimate of the amount of money that it would take to resolve the pay equity issue for both Nunavut and the Government of the Northwest Territories? Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, in the Report from the Standing Committee on Resource Management and Infrastructure, under Informatics there is an indication that the committee Members were concerned about Year 2000 compliance for government-wide systems, particularly those systems that manage and operate essential services such as power and fire suppression. Apparently the department assured the committee that a government-wide review was being undertaken to ensure Year 2000 compliance. Could the Minister indicate what has shown up from this review, are we safe, are we going to shut down January 1st?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. How did the Minister propose to deal with his report? There are side conversations here and it is kind of hard to hear. Did he say he was going to table it or he was going to give us a briefing or how would he propose to distribute that information to the rest of the MLAs?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As the Member pointed out, there are a number of cost components to the fund. The first one is, you have to pay somebody to market the notes and that is a cost of about $15,000 per note that we pay to our sales representatives. That was what we would have payed to Cornwallis Financial. Then once we get the funds in there is a whole bunch of other things that have to happen. First the funds go into an escrow account. They are held in trust and you have to pay a certain amount to your escrow account manager and in the case of the first fund it is the Bank of Montreal and it is the Pacific Western Limited on the second fund. Then once you are ready to convert those to notes, to finalize notes, then you get the actual $250,000 from every investor, you have to take it out of escrow account and put into an investment run by a Canadian investment manager. They hold their liquid assets for you until you are ready to lend them. There is a fee for that firm, as well, and in the two cases of the funds it is Arctic Financial Corporation that is paid a fee. That fee is usually based on a percentage of the funds that they hold or they transact.

Once you are ready to actually lend the money, then there are a number of other costs that are incurred. The first cost is a cost of receiving the loans, analyzing the loans, negotiating with the potential borrower and there is a fee, a flat fee, paid to the NWT investments manager to conduct that activity. Once the loan is issued, then there is an administrative workload associated with receiving the payments on the loans, making sure that the proper reporting is done to the federal government and to the board members themselves and, there is a fee paid to the NWT investments manager for that ongoing maintenance and management function and that is a percentage of the loans issued.

All of those costs are costs of administering the fund. We also, of course, as a company we have to have an audit, there is an audit fee every year. We have to have legal counsel involved in transacting many of these activities because, of course, they are very complex, so there is a local law firm, Gullberg, Weist and MacPherson, that do that for the funds and there is a fee that is paid to them for that.

There are a number of fees. The good thing is, of course, the fund is self-sustaining in that the interest proceeds from the lending covers all of those costs. Those costs have to be set in a way that allows the fund to recover them, but still be able to offer interest rates that are attractive to borrowers. There is quite an amount of, I call it self-discipline or tightness, in how much those fees are because if you have them too excessive you will not be able to lend at rates that are attractive. That is perhaps a long answer, but it lays out all of the various cost components involved in administering the fund on an ongoing basis.