Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I want to assure the Member for North Slave that for the boards that operated this past fiscal year in a deficit situation, operational reviews are going to be conducted in cooperation with those boards to ensure that they are being adequately resourced to look at areas where there may be expenditures that could be reduced through efficiencies and various methods. However, we are not singling out any board. This is a particularly difficult year for a number of the boards with a number of factors contributing to that.

So when we have that information in from those operating reviews, we will be in a much better position to see if it was the restructuring of the board which contributed to this or not. That work is just underway and is in progress now. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Minister. Item 6, oral questions. The honourable Member for Tu Nedhe, Mr. Nitah.

Thank you, Mr. Nitah. The honourable Minister responsible for the Department of Resources, Wildlife, and Economic Development, Mr. Handley.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We have a number of programs in RWED that are aimed at helping harvesters who make their living, or part of their living, off the land. If I could just go through some of them very quickly, and these are only the ones that the Member is asking about which are in reference to fur harvesters.

The Community Harvester Assistance program is one where we have committed $473,000 in the current fiscal year. The Western Harvesters Support program which was a $15 million program. There is $845,000 being spent this current year in that one. There is the Disaster Compensation program, a $15,000 Human Trapping Development program. There is a Fur Pricing program. The Fur Pricing program provides a subsidy of $345,000 for trappers. We maintain a Fur Market Service Revolving Fund. There is Fire Damage Compensation for trappers of $100,000.

Mr. Speaker, there are a number of programs that we have to assist people who make their living on the land. These are the main ones that I have referred to. Thank you.

Thank you, Minister Handley. Supplementary, Mr. Nitah.

Mr. Nitah, the question was not the topic that you started off with and we must stick to the one subject per question. I think it had something to do with income, so I will take the liberty of passing this on to the Minister of RWED, Mr. Handley, who originally took the first question. Mr. Handley.

Mr. Speaker, yes. We are very aware of the fact that over the last 20 months, fuel has gone up by roughly 25 percent. So anybody who has to depend on fuel in order to earn their livelihood or to even live is paying more now than they were before. We are continuing to monitor the situation and certainly we will continue to look at ways that we can do things differently here. As I mentioned, we do have a number of programs that support harvesters. Just a very quick calculation shows that we spent about $2.5 million this year in support of harvesters. I have asked my department to look at that to see if there is a better way of doing this to ensure that the money is better spent and hopefully help compensate for the increased fuel costs. Thank you.

Thank you, Minister Handley. Supplementary, Mr. Nitah.

Thank you, Mr. Nitah. The honourable Minister responsible for the Department of Resources, Wildlife and Economic Development, Mr. Handley.

Mr. Speaker, I will commit to do that. My staff are doing that on an ongoing basis. We have, as I mentioned, contributed a fair amount of money this fiscal year to this sector of our economy. The Western Harvesters' Assistance program was set up a number of years ago. Through that program, over $10 million has been given to communities and to aboriginal groups to support their harvesters. I would hope to work with them on how that money can be best utilized for the benefit of trappers. We are also working, Mr. Speaker, on programs, two pilot programs, to try to get young people into the trapping industry in order to help from that side as well. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Minister Handley. Final supplementary, Mr. Nitah.

Mr. Nitah, would you ask the question, please?

Thank you, Mr. Nitah, we have the question. The honourable Minister responsible for the Department of Resources, Wildlife and Economic Development, Mr. Handley.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I will try to keep the oil and gas from flowing through my veins too much. Mr. Speaker, yes, I commit to continuing to look at our strategy. We have a strategy. We did move to a new way of marketing Arctic furs a couple of years ago. It seems to be showing signs of success. The price of fur is coming up. We have a lot of programs that support the harvesters. If there are better ways of doing that, then I am certainly committed to looking at how we can improve that. Thank you.

Thank you, Minister Handley. Item 6, oral questions. The honourable Member for Yellowknife South, Mr. Bell.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My question today is for the Minister responsible for Education, Culture and Employment. Last night, he was on CBC Television. I listened with interest as he discussed his plans for human resource development. He talked about oil and gas training. He said that we were putting money into safety and driver education in this area, but also looking at mining. Then, Mr. Speaker, he said, and I quote, "Beyond that, I have a strategy of maximizing northern employment." That is not a strategy that I have seen tabled in this House or was aware of. I am wondering if Mr. Ootes can tell us about the strategy for maximizing northern employment? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Bell. The honourable Minister responsible for the Department of Education, Culture and Employment, Mr. Ootes.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The area that I spoke about, of course, was in regard to the human resource development plan which is part of the non-renewable resource strategy and when we speak about a $12 million strategy. That is part of the $236 million that we are trying to get from the federal government. With regard to the question of maximizing northern employment, that is a small strategy that we are starting to develop to ensure that in the territorial government, we are able to access individuals who may want to work within the territorial government. As well, we want to ensure that we go to industry and any other employers that we ensure that employment is created for Northerners who may be in university, for example, today. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Ootes. Supplementary, Mr. Bell.