Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I couldn't help but note that we have the same amount of money in the budget this year as far as suppression. I don't know what the circumstances are across the whole Territories, but knowing that around this area at least and I believe south of the lake, the snowfall has been significantly lower this year than what is normal and we have had a couple of dry years, is there a concern that we could be looking at significant extra expenditures this year?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, could the Minister advise the House if the figures we see in this budget for dealing with forest fires are close to, say, what has been spent over the past 10 years on average. So, is this close to a 10-year average or is it above or below it?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. On another issue -- I haven't finished with this budget area -- I know that there was some issue a while ago with the extension of the contract for air tankers and I know I have been pressing the Minister to do an RFP as soon as possible on that. I know the Minister had discussed at one point, because we had gotten to the point where we've gone past the deadline for the termination of one of the contracts. The Minister suggested that it was too late to go to an RFP right away but he could look at doing a short term extension in issuing an RFP to see what sort of prices we could get from Northern operators to deliver air tankers in a fairly short period of time. Why did the Minister choose to go with the five-year extension instead of the one or two-year extension?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The one thing that needs to be noted here, is that the Minister has now made a public commitment that in the third year there will be documents put out so that a public request for proposals may be undertaken and that there will be an opportunity for others to bid on it. I would like to ask the Minister, normally when it comes time to get government services or to have something built, it's quite typical for us if we want the best price to go to tender. How can the Minister say that we get the better price by negotiating a sole sourced contract instead of going to tender? How do you know what is going to come in from the competitors?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. You know, when the government was looking at waiving the business incentive policy on the North Slave Correctional Facility, they said that was in order to get lower prices too. It didn't work. It didn't get us any lower prices. It really is mind boggling to believe that without going out to ask a competitor or two or three what sort of price they might deliver a service for, how you could possibly say that you're getting the best price. If we knew we could always negotiate the best price, then why doesn't the government negotiate every single contract?

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Mr. Antoine.

Thank you, Mr. Antoine. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate that we've got lower prices because, as the Minister himself said, we don't know that this is as low as we could have got. That, I think, remains the problem in why I thought we should, if anything, do a shorter-term extension for a year or two and then go to RFP because it hasn't helped us to make sure that we know what we're getting. I think that's it for questions, Mr. Chairman.