Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Arctic Winter Games in Whitehorse is done and over with. I think we successfully concluded it. There have been some problems in the actual administration and running of the games. There were some flaws in it. I would like to examine that as the Minister responsible for Sports and Recreation for the Northwest Territories.

In my statement, I mentioned what we would like to do in Municipal and Community Affairs with regards to sports and recreation is take a close look at it and work with the other sports participants to see how we could improve on what we have.

Now that this Arctic Winter Games is over, the next Arctic Winter Games will be two years from now. We already talked to the deputy minister as to how we could analyze what we have to date. Listening to different inputs from this House, perhaps we could look at the games and analyze sports and recreation as a whole in the North.

At this point in time, this is where we are. We are in the discussion stage. We know there are concerns out there, and we would like to address them. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I attended a meeting on Monday with the Arctic Winter Games International Committee. The two host communities of Greenland and Nunavut raised the issue that they are pretty small and they may not be able to accommodate certain sports. One of them is the biathlon. Their argument is they do not have the facilities or the know how for hosting the biathlon. This meeting was the first time I had heard about it as the Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs.

In the course of the meeting, I understand it will not be until June or July before things get finalized in this area. We may have a chance to try and convince them to include the biathlon in the next games.

I did go to the biathlon site in Whitehorse and I have seen the facility that is required. I do not think it would be that much more to have this type of facility in either Iqaluit or Nuuk. It is really up to the host communities to tell us what they are capable of providing.

The other sports they were looking at was the ice sports. As you know, they had three ice surfaces in Whitehorse, yet they still had to go an hour by bus to Haines Junction for another arena over there. They were able to accommodate all of the ice sports there.

The way the division of the sports is going to be in the next two years from now, from what I understand between Nuuk and Iqaluit, is that the ice sports will be in Iqaluit. They only have one ice surface. They were looking at how we would deal with it. During the meeting, we suggested that perhaps an hour on a bus is about the same as an hour on the plane and that is the way that transportation gets done in the North. Why do they not look at Kimmurut or Pangnirtung or some of the other small communities close to Iqaluit to do the ice sports?

Some of the comments from other participants were that the Arctic Winter Games are there to see how other people live. There are athletes from the bigger centres that will have a good opportunity to go into the smaller communities to see how other people live. I think the ice sports are going to be in if they use the outlying communities around Iqaluit to accommodate them. That was my understanding of the meeting. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you. I think by splitting up the games two years from now, it does open the avenue for splitting up the games, as the Member was saying in his preamble. We will probably look at it.

Just for your information, there is already a lobby for four years from now for it to be in northern Alberta. That is still some ways down the line, but there is still time to get into that.

Yes to the question that smaller communities may have the opportunity with this precedence in Iqaluit and Nuuk of splitting up the games. Thank you.