Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The social assistance regulations has an area called unearned income, and it has always been treated as unearned income, Mr. Speaker. the legal opinion that we had received, a summary of which we passed on to the Member, indicated that we were correct in that process.
One of the reasons why this was done was because we have no access to the IBA agreements, which is considered a private company, and the beneficiaries, the Dogrib community people. We had no information of how to access the information contained in the agreement or what the agreement says.
I should state though, Mr. Speaker, that because IBA arrangements have extrinsic evidence that we can possibly consider, I am working on a process that will take into account these payments. I need to take that forward to Cabinet and to the FMB to take into consideration. Also, I am checking with Aboriginal Affairs to see what implications it might have in order to proceed with recognizing IBAs and looking at not deducting that from payments.