Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, it has been a hectic few weeks. We are in session, there is the Living History project that is in full swing this week and a number of events going on. There is the signing of the Salt River First Nation, the Beaufort-Delta Self-Government Agreement, the oil and gas symposium in Inuvik, just to mention a few, as well as National Aboriginal Day festivities across the North.

I do not know. Probably the last two weeks of June we will try to have a preliminary discussion with Ministers about the suggestion he is making and then I think we are going into holidays and travelling. I will see what we can do with it in the month of July. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Premier. Supplementary, Mr. Krutko.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I too think it is important that we do have such a strategy, but I want to ensure the strategy is not limited to the boards and agencies but all levels of the government, so that those people within the government try to reach out to small communities and get a better feel for what the Northwest Territories is made of.

Will the Premier commit to not limiting the strategy, but to try to have a broad strategy affecting all aspects of government?

Thank you, Mr. Krutko. The honourable Premier, Mr. Kakfwi.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I will consider what the Member is recommending and respond to him by letter before the end of July. Thank you.

Thank you. Final supplementary, Mr. Krutko.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. A strategy is just a strategy with a slogan and I want to make sure there are some teeth in this strategy. I would like to ask the Premier, would this strategy be put in place through a policy or directive which will be binding on this government? Will it come forward as a directive or policy change?

Thank you, Mr. Krutko. The honourable Premier, Mr. Kakfwi.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. That would be part of what the officials would advise us on, the recommended method of dealing with this. Once we have that we will advise the Member about the advice we get. We will share that with him. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Premier. Item 6, oral questions. The honourable Member for Frame Lake, Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I would like to follow up on some questions I was asking the Minister for Public Works and Services on Friday. On Friday the Minister responded to a question I had asked by stating that he had been told as much as $33 million a year could be going to pay the increased cost for the Business Incentive Policy.

Could the Minister please advise me whether or not the $33 million was referring to the last fiscal year, or any year in particular?

Thank you, Mr. Dent. The honourable Minister responsible for Public Works and Services, Mr. Steen.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the reference I made to $33 million is probably the only figure that I have that relates to the estimated costs of BIP through this government. The figure is not a recent figure by any nature. The figure was given to the committee that was reviewing BIP and I believe it was in the last government. I am not even sure if the figure applied to government as it existed in the time of one territory or whether it was in fact the new territory. I cannot recall the exact time, but as a committee member we received this information.

That was the estimated figure we were given by the consultants as to what it could cost this government in a year. It depended on the amount of contracting the government did and the nature of capital and O and M expenditures for the year. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Supplementary, Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It makes a big difference what year we are talking about. If they had a capital budget of $300 million, then $33 million is a 10 percent figure, but if as we had last year, a capital budget of $132 million, $33 million of that would indicate that we had a 50 percent premium that we were paying for the Business Incentive Policy. I think that caught a lot of Members by surprise on Friday.

Will the Minister commit to find out what year that $33 million figure referred to and report back to the House tomorrow?

Thank you, Mr. Dent. The honourable Minister responsible for Public Works and Services, Mr. Steen.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I will commit to try and find out that information, but like I said, it is old information that I had as a committee member and I am not sure where that information is sitting now. I will commit to try and find it. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Supplementary, Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I just want to be clear then that the Minister makes it sound like the department which had prepared the decision paper to go to Cabinet to waive the BIP on this project did not have any current figures as to the impact of whether or not BIP costs any extra money directly. Is that the case?

Thank you, Mr. Dent. The honourable Minister responsible for Public Works and Services, Mr. Steen.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, that is correct. The department did not have the exact figures of what BIP would cost on this particular project, because half of the project in phase two is still going to tender. The portion that applied to phase one is still in the process of being worked out as well.

What we did have were figures we used for comparison. The city project, for instance, the twin-pad arena, has no BIP applied to it. The city was receiving bids from southern tenders that were 10 percent less than northern tenders. There was no BIP applied. I believe it was either 10 percent or 9 percent less than what was received from northern tenders. We were using those types of things as examples of where we might gain. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Final supplementary, Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Since the Minister did confirm that there was no direct knowledge of what the expected savings would be, has the department ever done a comparison or an examination of the spin-off benefits of the BIP, the other jobs created in the North and then taking a look at what that means to us in terms of the grant from Canada and what we make in terms of corporate income tax? Has there been a macro-economic look at the performance of the BIP?

Thank you, Mr. Dent. The honourable Minister responsible for the Department of Public Works and Services, Mr. Steen.