Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, if I could speak, first of all, to the fee we charge for administration of the water and sewage services in the communities. In the existing agreements with the communities, the identified administration fee is nine percent. Over the past few years, Public Works has not been charging the nine percent. They were charging in the range of six percent. However, about two years ago, we got direction from FMBS that we were supposed to charge enough to recoup our costs. Public Works identified that as 16 percent. We then started charging the communities this rate, however, we thought that we could work out agreements with the communities and identify this rate in the agreements by April 1st. In response to the recommendations from the standing committees, we took this back to FMBS and FMBS agreed that we could go with what's in the existing agreements, which is nine percent. That's what our plan is at this time.
At the present time, we've made the communities aware of this and we are negotiating with the communities on new agreements. We expect that we may be able to reach signing of these agreements by the end of this month, possibly at the same time as the Beaufort-Delta conference is taking place. In relation to the communities assuming responsibility and having concerns as to the capacity to carry out and meet the responsibilities, for a number of years now, we've had a training program which certified water treatment plant people, operators, including the truck drivers, if that's who was the identified water treatment plant operator. We have programs where these people can get certified. This is an ongoing program that we've had for a couple of years in cooperation with MACA and Health and Social Services. What we are prepared to do under these new agreements, Mr. Chairman, is we would identify criteria where we could turn over more and more responsibilities to the community for water delivery as they show capacity and they have the trained people. We would not be asking them to take this on if they don't have the trained people. I believe some of these recommendations came from the Member and the departments, both MACA and Public Works, are following up on these recommendations, including having a meeting with all four community leaders in those communities that we still have water operating agreements with. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.