Thank you. In the legal services board activity, with regard to the funding that is there, members of the committee probably know that this was jointly funded to fund the legal aid services.

About 11 years ago, it was a 50/50 share with the feds and since that time, when the feds started to have some major debt recovery exercises, they have not funded the legal aid services in the North as well as throughout the whole country. All the jurisdictions throughout the country are going through the same problems with the legal services that are underfunded by the feds.

I think our share right now has increased. I think we are funding about 70 percent of the total budget ourselves and the feds are funding only about 30 percent of operations. Last year, the federal Justice Minister indicated that the federal government was looking at trying to find some more money to alleviate this problem. There was an election. However, I am told by the Department of Justice that recently, even as recently as last week, there was a deputy ministers conference call where this was raised again. They were assured by the deputy minister of federal Justice that this is high on the agenda. They are still promising these things, but we still have to see these things. I just want to get that information out, that there is work at that level.

In the meantime, we have a situation here, specifically in our own jurisdiction, where this program is having some financial problems. We are going to be in a deficit this year, maybe $200,000. The last time this fund was reviewed was about ten years ago. I have instructed the department to start looking into how we could best approach this. We may be seriously considering doing a review of this service that we are providing. I am working closely with the board and they have advised me that they are doing the best they can to try to alleviate this problem. This is where we are at.

I would be pleased to receive any kind of recommendation that the committee may have as a result of its research as well. You may find that our jurisdiction here is doing really well compared with the other jurisdictions in the country with regard to funding legal aid. I thought I would mention that.

To answer your question, we need to do a review and look at how this is done. In the meantime, we have to keep working with our federal counterparts, as they did make a commitment that they know the problems that we all face and there maybe something there from the federal government some time in the future while we are doing our own review. Thank you.