Thank you, Mr. Murray. Ms. Kennedy, did you want to respond to that?

Thank you, Ms. Kennedy. Mr. Braden.

Is there a dollar amount, again in ballpark terms, of just what is the outstanding receivables for land leases? Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Braden. Ms. Kennedy.

Thank you, Ms. Kennedy. Mr. Braden.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. One more question related to this then. Mr. Murray identified turning residential leases into title. I think that is something that we would all agree would meet with a great deal of favour out there in the long run. What about recreational leases? Give us a picture in that neighbourhood of what is the status of recreational leaseholders and their ability to buy the property. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Braden. Mr. Minister.

Again, I will ask the deputy minister to respond to that specific question. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Mr. Murray.

Thank you, Mr. Murray. Mr. Braden.

Mr. Chairman, this question may go into the area of land claim negotiating mandate, which I understand is confidential and I respect that, but I would like to ask the question, what is the government's position on recreational land leases with claimant groups? Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Braden. Mr. Minister.

Mr. Chairman, I think it is premature to provide a definite answer, but I think it is an ongoing discussion item with another department, MAA, so we can come to a common ground or common approach of how we should deal with it.

I think it was raised previously and it will continue to be raised again in the same context. I do not know if that satisfies the Member as an answer to the Member's question. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. We are on page 4-25, lands administration, budget summary, operations expense, total operations expense, $2,111,000.

Page 4-29, community development, budget summary, operations expense, total operations expense, $1,218,000.

Page 4-31, community development, grants and contributions, grants, total grants, $28,000. Mr. Miltenberger.

Jeepers, I was not paying close enough attention. I just would like to ask the Minister if he could speak briefly to the issue of sports and recreation in general. Since we are in a public session here, in terms of the planning that is taking place and the need to try to rekindle and foster greater support for sport and recreation at the community level and the need to review our involvement in the Arctic Winter Games to make it more reasonable and affordable, so it is not this sun that is the centre of the recreational universe, but more a planet like Pluto or Uranus.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Mr. Minister.

Excuse my laughing here, based on the great analogy my colleague uses, Mr. Chairman. I will just reiterate a number of points we raised yesterday in our appearance before the AOC.

Our involvement in the Arctic Winter Games, our position is that we would like to move the games from a two- to a four-year format after the 2004 Games which is going to be hosted in Fort McMurray, Alberta.

I think from that we will allow ourselves to develop other sports development across the Territories, including competitions, promoting the philosophy of mass participation across the Territories, establishing new direction of where we want to go in terms of sport, recreation and youth. I think those are the majority of our intentions in terms of the philosophy and the direction we want to go.

Relative to that, we are liaising with the president of Sport North. We are also talking to the Aboriginal Sports Circle and all the communities in terms of what they see as important in terms of the evolution of sports and recreation and the youth across the Territories.

We are hearing from those discussions. We are taking the position that yes, we do have to go from a two- to a four-year format so we can reinvest some of those monies back into not only regional sports programs, but also community. A lot of the communities determine their priority on sports and from that, we respond to the question of how as a department do we respond to those essential questions.

We said that we had put records and development officers in the regions. The question again came down to what is their functional role? We said that is to work with the community recreation directors, because the communities felt that their recreation director is spending most of their time fund-raising, running bingos, and not doing any work in terms of sports development or maintaining existing sports facilities.

We also talked a bit about where we should put additional funding as a department. We feel that we should put funding into the maintenance of the facilities. We put great money into the capital infrastructure, but no money into the ongoing operations and maintenance of those facilities. We should put more money into sports development at the community level. We agree that is where we should go.

We are also talking with Education in terms of trying to get them to allow the communities access to gymnasiums and other sporting facilities they own. I use, for example, ball diamonds. Many of the ball diamonds in the small communities are on school property. That is another area we would like to discuss further with them.

I think to summarize the overall approach that we are now dealing with the sports and recreation issue, we are also talking to Sports North about the composition of their board. I believe that we should have five members from the five regions and five members at large, with a president elected amongst themselves. So there are a whole range of new approaches we are taking. I think that is going to be for the betterment of sports recreation and youth across the Territories. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.