To comment on the Mackenzie Valley Development Committee, I just had a round of constituency meetings and none of the communities had ever heard of this plan. I am sure they have not come to any of the communities in the Deh Cho.

One further comment I wanted to make, and the rest of my questions I will save for detail. Under the BIP program, we are running into a couple of problems on the Hay River Reserve. Because the reserve is close to the town of Hay River, it is being lumped in as part of the town of Hay River. So when they go get registered with BIP, they mark the community down and it is marked as Hay River. On the reserve, there is no bank and services.

They cannot use their land as part of the security for loans. So lending agencies will not go on the reserve. Because they are BIP'ed the same as Hay River, they have a hard time getting grants. When they do qualify for a grant, it is always considered market disruption because they are considered part of Hay River, but they are not part of Hay River. They are their own community.

I think that is something that really has got to be looked at. When I did my round of meetings in the communities, there was a real concern of that in the South Slave and the Deh Cho, but in your department it would be considered part of the South Slave.

-- Laughter

When it comes to BDF funding, there is very little for the small communities. Last year, the BDF funding ran out of money. The program ran out of money at the end of June. So when you start looking at it, you say why is this happening? The pot of money that comes to the region was very small, and the money is being gobbled up by the bigger communities. I think that is a problem.

There are two points I am making here: the problem with the reserve and also the BDF funding. There has to be a look at reallocating some of the funds so the smaller communities have a chance to get at it.