Thank you, Mr. Bell. The honourable Minister of MACA, Mr. Steen.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, if I understand the question correctly, I believe that what we are trying to do here is get Sport North to sit down with the department and the rest of the departments and hopefully resolve what issues have been raised up to now. I don't want to go into a whole long discussion again on it, but one thing I would like to clarify is the fact that we are not so much trying to suggest replacement of the Sport North board, but rather the new board would be making recommendations to and advising Sport North who would still be administering the programs on behalf of the department. They would be making recommendations on the disposition of the lottery funding. That would have been the main reason for establishing the board. However, there is a long list of what other things that are hoped to be accomplished by establishing the board. But it does involve for allowing for the participation and some sense of input from the smaller communities by the sports organizations into Sport North and how it administers sports and recreation and the fund in the Territories. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Supplementary, Mr. Bell.

Thank you. I can appreciate the Minister has been over this and I know we will have a chance to sit down and raise a number of concerns with the Minister, Regular Members will. Specific to this issue though, Mr. Speaker, is a need to get some baseline data, a need to determine things like participation rates. I guess my real question is, if we are going to implement this new governance structure, but we don't know where our participation rates are, I am wondering how we are going to know if we are successful. How can we evaluate, judge and measure something like this new mechanism if we really don't know where we are now. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Bell. The honourable Minister of MACA, Mr. Steen.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I believe that the department has a sense of where it is now and also the participants who are recommending the formation of this board feel like they know where they are now as well. What Sport North requested at the annual meeting was information in relation to the department's expenditures as far as recreation programs go in the smaller communities. The department is in the process right now of gathering that and we are hoping to make it available to Sport North in a very short while. Furthermore, I now have a meeting with the president of Sport North tomorrow morning, and I am hoping that we can talk this thing out and see where it went off track.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Supplementary, Mr. Bell.

Thank you. I appreciate the Minster's willingness to meet with the president of Sport North to try to resolve this. I think that's a good first step, Mr. Speaker. The Minister indicated that he thinks the department has a sense of where we are now regarding participation rates and these types of things. I am wondering if the Minister could indicate whether or not the department has ever tried to quantify the value of volunteer efforts in sports, put a dollar figure on the amount of work we are able to leverage from volunteers around the North. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, in relation to whether we did any analysis of the benefits dollar-wise of volunteer efforts, I don't believe anybody has ever done this. But I'd just like to make a point here. We're not trying to get rid of volunteers. We know that sports and rec depends almost 99 percent on volunteer efforts. We don't see this as doing away with volunteers. That's not what we hope, anyway. One thing about all this, this is not a department initiative. We put it to the partners and this came back from them, the proposal for a separate board. I assume that they've taken into consideration volunteer efforts from the individual sport organizations. I'm sure they do. So we're not trying to do away with these volunteers. We're trying to make sports and recreation applicable equally across the Territories if we could. I might find out, for instance, that Sport North, even though it's a big outfit, it's still representing only 13 out of 33 communities in their make-up. On the make-up of the territorial sports organizations, 96 is Yellowknife and 66 is for the rest of the Territories. So there is a little bit of an imbalance here that needs to be corrected, and that's what we're trying to do. We're working with the sports organizations to hopefully accomplish this, Mr. Speaker. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Your final supplementary, Mr. Bell.

Thank you. I think what we need to do is add more money, Mr. Speaker, because if we have a fixed sum, if we have this fixed pie and we're going to try to slice it a few more ways by adding this extra layer of governance over and above the service delivery agents, we're simply going to have fewer dollars filter down to all of the communities, including the smaller communities who we're really trying to help. Wouldn't the Minister acknowledge that if we're going to make any inroads into fixing sport in the Territories, it's going to be by adding some money? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Bell. The honourable Minister of MACA, Mr. Steen.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I think the Members well know that we don't have any more money to put in the pot. All we have is what money we're getting now, added to a program from the federal government. That's the only addition to the whole thing. It is not our intent to put another cost of administration in this. The partners themselves are suggesting that we may do with less administration if we establish this board. So I'm waiting to see how they plan to point this out to me.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. That was the last question and the last answer. Time for question period has ended. Item 7, written questions. Item 8, returns to written questions. Item 9, replies to Opening Address. The chair recognizes the honourable Member for Yellowknife Centre, Mr. Ootes.