Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think the idea of pulling the Energy Secretariat and putting it in another area would be news, and to see where it would go would be interesting as well. One of the areas, and again it goes to the $550,000, devolution of government structures of $250,000.

I can understand the devolution portion, but one thing I have a concern with is, and again it goes back to the self-government and land claims tables. If we use Nunavut as an example, we tried to ensure that the federal government would pay their portion when it came to the development of Nunavut and so on. Is there a plan in the sense of ensuring that the federal government will reimburse our government in this section or is it a good-will gesture, so to speak, from this government? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Roland. Mr. Handley.

Mr. Chairman, referring to this $550,000 -- or the $330,000 basically is what it is, for the Intergovernmental Forum, that is a GNWT contribution. We have a stake in this. We are a partner in this. We are not expecting that the federal government would pay us back that amount of money. We do have a clear understanding though that any incremental costs that occur as we get into self-government, but that is a different matter, that would be picked up by the federal government. This money is our investment in the exercise. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Handley. Mr. Roland.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Is this the nature of the work, that this style is considered very preliminary in the sense that it is not considered to be incremental costs? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Roland. Mr. Handley.

Mr. Chairman, I think there are two things. One is, as we have said and as the Premier has explained as well, that part of it is helping aboriginal governments establish their capacity and their structure, how they are going to deal with devolution and resource revenue sharing. Part of it as well is helping us to understand what our relationship is with them on those two areas of devolution and resource revenue sharing. Certainly this is considered to be money that is being invested by this government in achieving the devolution, revenue resource sharing and the establishment of some sort of management regime to manage those initiatives. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Handley. We are on Executive, operations expenditures, not previously authorized, Cabinet Secretariat, $1,400,000. Agreed?

Agreed. We will go to Executive, operations expenditures, Financial Management Board Secretariat. Mr. Bell.

Thank you. In the area of the directorate, the $800,000 for research, I am wondering if the Minister can indicate how much of that has been spent to date and whether the majority of that has gone to southern or northern firms, and whether primarily it was sole-sourced or competitively bid? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Bell. Mr. Handley.

Mr. Chairman, approximately $600,000 has been spent. I will ask Mr. Voytilla to give us the breakdown of those expenditures. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Handley. Mr. Voytilla.

Thank you Mr. Voytilla. Mr. Bell.

Thank you. Mr. Voytilla listed off quite a number of contracts and some $600,000 worth of work. I am wondering if the Minister can indicate if there is any of it that was not sole-sourced?

Thank you Mr. Bell. Mr. Handley.

Mr. Chairman, I believe that all of this was sole-sourced. I might add that we contracted with Mr. Robertson as a follow-up to the work that he had done on the electrical generation study.

The information and the advice we needed was very technical. As Mr. Voytilla has pointed out, a lot of it -- in fact, most of it is not available in the Northwest Territories. We relied on Mr. Robertson's expertise to give us advice on where we could turn for the best advice. We were also committed to reviewing hydro potential at all of the aboriginal assemblies over the summer. We were working in a fairly tight time frame to get good advice before we went out and did presentations to aboriginal communities. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Handley. Mr. Bell.

This is why I did get into the criteria earlier in question period to the Premier and wanted to talk about the criteria for sole-sourcing. It can be urgently required, but it also has to be injurious to the public interest, whatever that means. I suppose this is all very subjective. We could suggest that just about everything that we do is urgent.

In any case, I do not want to go through all of these contracts. I just want to maybe pick one and have the Minister give me an example as to the criteria used. What is the sole-source explanation for using McLennan Ross as the barristers and solicitors for the $140,000 worth of work? If the Minister could give me detail on the sole-source explanation. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Bell. Mr. Handley.

Mr. Chairman, we are confident that these sole-sourced contracts fit within the intent of the sole-sourcing guidelines. First of all, on the urgency one, we had an opportunity last summer. We continue to have that opportunity, I believe, to take advantage of the energy crisis that is being faced in North America, both on electrical and also on the gas.

In this case, we were looking at the hydroelectric potential of the North. There is a federal energy reference committee that is doing work. We wanted to ensure that the rest of Canada knew that we had this huge potential here worth hundreds of millions of dollars annually.

So in terms of urgency, I believe that there was an urgency and certainly a public interest in having good work done urgently.

In terms of capability, we went to the best sources of information. We had to get answers very quickly. Some of the specific work that we were looking at, for example, the Taltson work, was deemed to be urgent by the South Slave leadership. It was not only us but some of the leadership who are looking at these issues felt that there was an urgency to carry on with this. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Handley. Mr. Bell.