Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The timeframe we have had to work with is very short. We have had since mid-January to go through this process. We have not been in government for four months. It has been closer to two months.

One of the early commitments that we made, going back to our planning sessions, was that we would involve Caucus and work very much in partnership. We were not going to jump ahead and go off with our own agenda, that we would work with everyone. We have been doing that. It was only a couple of days ago that we agreed on our agenda, our vision, our priorities, our strategies, our actions, so we have really only had a couple of days to really have that to work with.

We had agreed in Providence that we would proceed this way, with the interim appropriations for the first four months, or until the 2000-2001 budgets were approved.

During this time, we have put limits on the departments. The interim appropriations generally represent spending that is restrained, that does not include a lot of new initiatives, and hopefully is responsible. When we take into consideration the contracts we need to enter into, the need to move ahead with some capital projects, and so on, then the amount in the interim appropriations in total represents 45 percent of our projected budget for this coming year.

I agree that is limiting our ability to be able to take new directions and initiatives in the balance of the year. There is no question about that. As well, being as close as we are to our borrowing limit does limit the wiggle room we have. It is continually narrowing and we are very aware of that. We have to manage that very carefully.

As we prepared the interim appropriations, there were a number of new initiatives. The new initiatives that are included in here are in large initiatives that come at the recommendations of the whole Caucus.

Working Together, for example, in education. That is a program that a lot of people spoke on. It had to do with student summer employment. It was necessary to put some money back into the old program, which was sunsetted.

The intergovernmental forum process is another one where we felt there was a consensus to move ahead with this as a new initiative and move it ahead more aggressively than we had planned. There are some new initiatives here, but we tried to read what Members were saying and have anything new in here reflect the priorities we were hearing.

We are aware we are getting increasingly close to our borrowing limit, and we need to look for new dollars. We need to look internally. We intend to continue doing that. We will review our capital budgets. We will review our operations and maintenance very carefully as we move along and as we prepare our budgets. That is essential, as was mentioned earlier on a number of occasions.

We initiated discussion with the federal government to review what might be available in terms of reconsideration or resource development support. We have also had to continue with some initiatives in the resource and development area in particular to try and maximize the benefit we get out of that.

I hear the Member very clearly. We do not want to be overly optimistic either. As I said, our wiggle room is a lot smaller. Being overly optimistic could create some risk at the end. We are very aware of that. Thank you.