Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, to the Minister for that response. You pointed out that the regional position had never been filled by the previous government and having been there, I know the reason for that was we saw other priorities for the money.

It would have been nice to have that position funded. We did not feel comfortable to fill that position when we were saying we did not have enough money for education. Again, it comes back to my position that this perhaps should have been postponed until we got to the mains, at which time there would be a better idea of how we would allocate funds to make sure we had enough for it.

Under regional committee relations, the previous government eliminated the regional directors positions in order to save money, but we are now talking about three positions. I am not sure if they are in the regions. Regional directors may have been a better way to handle this than what is being proposed right now.

Under intergovernmental forum, I would hope we are not the only ones that are going to be taking on the significant expenditures here. I agree this is an imperative issue. We must be well prepared to deal with it. Why have we not expected the federal government to contribute to the cost of organizing this? I see us with three PYs dedicated to it. Have the feds committed to the same level of expenditure, or have we even talked to them about sharing the costs for the organization of this operation?

I would think this certainly is an area in which, if there is an Intergovernmental Forum Secretariat, there should be a sharing of costs between this government and the federal government. I know once we start undertaking an expenditure, it is pretty tough to go back to the feds and have them kick in after the fact.

I am not sure how many questions I can ask before - I know the Minister takes a while to respond to questions. I am scared that if I stop now, I may not get another chance to ask. It is a natural break in the questioning, so, I will take a chance and end there and ask the Minister if he can respond to those two comments and questions.