Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Some of this we discussed when I was down in Fort Providence in the fall. There is a recognition that the Property Assessment and Taxation Act, which deals with the taxation side of your question, is out of date and needs to be revisited and redone. We are taking some long-term steps, working with the Department of Finance, and in the fall of this year, we are going to be doing some options for revenue generation and looking at alternate ways of how this might be done.

We do have a piece of legislation today that we are bound by called the Property Assessment and Taxation Act. We have to send out assessment notices and the Department of Finance has to send out tax notices. That is legally binding. The recognition is that we are hoping to have some proposals done later this year that could be consulted on over the next year. I believe this is an issue that will take a wide-ranging level of consultation between the various communities and groups, and then put forward legislative proposals later on, say in 2002. That is the game plan that we have in front of us. It is not one that can be fixed in the short term, because it is a piece of legislation that will require a total rewrite. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. If the government directly sells the land itself, its own Commissioner's land, then we would set the price. If it is the community, if the land is transferred to the community, it becomes community lands and then they set the price.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Generally speaking, we would not directly sell Commissioner's land. That is one of the reasons we have been, if you will, facilitating this process amongst the groups and the community. The preference is to have the land go to the community government, then they deal with the groups in the community, and in a process, that works out.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We have identified four key strategy areas within the lands administration area that we feel will help achieve a goal of an efficient land administration system. Those four areas of strategies are turning residential leases into title to promote home ownership and reduce the administrative burden. Right now, leases have to be renewed every five years and things like that. Once it is done in title, the only time it is transacted is when the land is bought and sold. That is one area.

The second area of strategy is to transfer more lands to government ownership or government control -- community governments, excuse me.

The third area is to have transferring of federal lands within community boundaries to the GNWT, or return the implementation to DIAND. We have had an arrangement for 15 years -- as far as I know, if not longer -- whereby the department was providing DIAND with administrative services of their lands inside communities, but we were doing it for no cost. I think we need to either recoup something for the work we are doing or let them administer their own lands. That is something we need to discuss at length with the federal government and with DIAND locally as well.

The fourth area, as you mentioned, is the whole area of sound administrative practice, which is cleaning up billing, just by reducing the number of leases you have. If you take all of the residential leases and over time they become title, it reduces your administrative responsibility and reduces the paper flow. We are working on those four key strategy areas, and work continues on those. Not just within Municipal and Community Affairs, but with the other departments involved, for instance, the Housing Corporation as it relates to residential leases. They have many of the homes in the small communities and other communities may be involved with the Housing Corporation or their programs.