Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We have heard concerns on the growth within the Executive. We know there are many pressures facing us as a government and there is a need to do some reinvestment in areas, so we can make sure that we meet the objectives that we have set for ourselves.

We know it is a high priority of the 13th Assembly as well as the 14th Assembly when we speak on the issue of aboriginal governments and their involvement with the Government of the Northwest Territories. We know there is a need to do some expansion.

The question that comes to bear is, for example, we went from the end days of the 13th Assembly down to six Ministers after division. There was discussion of going up to the seventh Minister so there could be a fair distribution of the workload in the Cabinet offices. What we have seen here, in a sense, for the time being at least, the Premier has elected to hold his portfolio of Resources, Wildlife and Economic Development and with that, an extra position. We know that there has been work going on upstairs to try and accommodate the growth of the Cabinet Members.

A concern that I have is there are areas where, yes, we are going to reinvest. Until we know our fiscal situation, we have to be very prudent about where we are going to spend our dollars.

The Minister has provided information, as the committee requested, in identification of new positions and associated costs. I thank the Premier for getting that information to us. But there are a number of areas we have to look at. As I said earlier in my comments to the interim appropriation as a whole, in approving the interim appropriation, we are in fact setting the stage for the business plan as a whole. Although we are combining areas in the Executive that have grown from the Cabinet Secretariat and the Ministerial offices, we are looking at over $500,000 or a third of the budget.

So that adds up to almost $1.5 million or higher for the year. That is a significant increase of expenditures in the Executive. How do we balance that? That is a difficult question to go with. We know that demands are out there and no previous governments seemed able to find dollars. For example, the Constitutional Working Group, which did not have an actual line item, but seemed to find the dollars by coming back to the government for supplementary appropriations, and so on.

Early in the life of the 13th Assembly, regional director positions were removed or were no longer considered a vital part of government and maybe that is something that has to be revisited along with a lot of other decisions that were made.

The ideal is to be prudent. It is a situation where all the positions put forward are vital to ensure the effective operation of the Cabinet and Cabinet Secretariat. With the information provided by the Premier's office, the executive assistant, executive secretary and chief of staff, the executive assistant has been a revised position to the chief of staff and the dollars associated with that.

The dollars identified, are they the total cost of the area? Or is it a situation where positions have been revised and the dollar amount identified is to top up the existing salary that was there? Thank you.