Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, this government is still following the Negotiated Contract Policy. Maybe, just for clarification, you would allow me, since we extended question period indefinitely here, that a little background information just to get into focus here. In May, 1997, this Legislative Assembly passed a motion calling upon the then Premier to specifically clarify the government's position on government-wide non-competitive contracts by providing a draft policy on non-competitive contracts to the standing committees by August 15, 1997. In June, 1997, the Cabinet referred a draft negotiated contracts policy for the standing committee to review. This is where it is at.

Carrying on, in December, 1998, an intergovernmental review team was established to review the government's negotiated contracts. The review team recommended several improvements to the decision-making processes for negotiated contracts as well as public disclosure and reporting practises. These recommendations were accepted by Cabinet and FMB recently in May, 1999. In June, this last month, myself and the chair of FMB distributed a package to MLAs advising of the review team's progress and plans for further work. The same package contains copies of relevant procedures approved by the Cabinet and FMB, as well as a copy of the report prepared under the direction of the review team, Mr. Speaker. With that little bit of background, there has been a lot of work since 1997 that we have gone through upon questions of honourable Members in the House to this government of negotiated contracts. We know there is a lot of scrutiny that we are going through in this whole area. What we are trying to do is comply with the direction of this Legislative Assembly to come out with some clear guidelines on how to deal with negotiated contracts. We have not changed the policy, we are just trying to clarify some of the input that goes into reviewing negotiated contracts as they come forward as proposals. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.