Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The work completed to date includes two economic feasibility studies to determine whether or not we could bring power to market at current rates. That was about $60,000 to date, although some of the billings on that project are not in yet.

There was work done with the South Slave leadership to try to work out a consensus on how to approach the Taltson development. We have retained Mr. Francois Paulet to assist us in that work with the South Slave leadership. That was about $23,000. We retained an individual who had a specialization in transmission line issues, Mr. Norm Olsen. That was about $7,000. A lot of that work tied into the economic feasibility analysis we were doing, as well as the preparation work for the Western Governors' meeting and the Energy Ministers' meeting on the east/west transmission grid.

Mr. Peter Lougheed was retained to give us advice strategically on interprovincial issues, both trade and transmission, as well as industry market potential in western Canada. That was about $17,000. McLennan Ross, Barristers and Solicitors, were retained to do work with respect to the legislative regulatory and taxation aspects of NWT hydro development. Again, feeding into some of our feasibility work but getting road maps on the jurisdictional issues involved with hydro development, regulatory issues and processes and how to potentially structure the approach to hydro development from a taxation standpoint, including the potential for introducing a levy on hydro generation, which would be the main source of government revenues flowing from hydro development.

In addition, they did some work on how we would move the Taltson project forward, the steps that would be involved and the work plan that would need to be followed to advance that project, should we get agreement with the South Slave leadership to in fact move forward aggressively on Taltson developments. That was about $140,000.

We retained a communications firm to help us with the public consultation, media information and overall communications advice on how to effectively communicate the issues with respect to hydro development to the public. That was about $74,000.

We retained -- we did not retain but we participated in an inter-provincial study of transmission grid issues across Canada. That was contributed to by all provinces and territories participating. Our cost on that was $5,900.

We then have the continuing work of the electrical review team, who worked not only with the hydro project but on dealing with some of the related issues with respect to electrical generation regulation and distribution in the Territories, and following through on their recommendations from last year, as well as following through and doing a lot more research to assist us with assessing hydro potential.

The three consultants that have done that work for us: Mr. Jim Robertson, and we have paid out about $90,000 to Mr. Robertson; Dave Morris and Associates, about $100,000; and Mr. Fred Abbott, about $40,000.

In addition, we have worked closely with the Power Corporation to draw on whatever information and expertise they had in the field. Mr. Gord Stewart has been a key member of our steering committee. Their local hydro officer, Mr. Grabke, has provided invaluable assistance to us as well. That has been their contribution to the project.

That summarizes the work that has been done and paid for. Many of those are northern contractors. Some are southerners, as has already been discussed. This was largely to build the body of knowledge and information about the aspects of hydro so that we knew whether or not we had something that was viable to market. We started to know what would be involved in marketing it and we were dealing with many of the issues that we felt were relevant to address through our community consultation and our work with aboriginal governments, and seeing if there was an interest in jointly pursuing this activity.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As the Minister pointed out, the work plan for the summer project had been discussed at FMB and had been approved in principle. We then undertook to initiate the work and to cost out the work plan in adequate detail for the Financial Management Board. The September 26th date is the date that the special warrant was signed by the Commissioner. That is the date that appears on the document. The date it went to FMB may have been somewhat before that but it was in September that the Financial Management Board gave the final approval to the dollars associated with the work plan, although the work plan had been approximately quantified for them at the outset of the summer.

With respect to the Financial Administration Act, the authority exists to expend money within the appropriation subject to the purpose of that appropriation. The key consideration for us was to get authority for an additional appropriation prior to us hitting a level of spending that we could not have accommodated should that special warrant not have been approved. We feel that we adhered to that provision of the act.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We did provide a quantified work plan with estimates of what the cost would be in carrying it out. However, those were estimates because until you engage in discussions with the specialists and scope out the project and the work required, it is difficult to be specific with the cost of each aspect of the project. We were working within a tentative budget on the project.

With respect to the specific question on the timing of the special warrant, we had to make sure that our spending for that date was something that we could accommodate should the special warrant not be approved. The timing of the special warrant is very critical to that because the special warrant in this case was signed by the Commissioner on September 26th. The timing of that was important because that was approaching the period of time when we could not have dealt with the expenditures to date without the authority of the special warrant.