Thank you, Mr. Speaker. This is something that I have been having a fair amount of discussion on and the department has been working on for a number of months now with the DIAND officials. There is a Northern Development Ministers' meeting being held in Chibougamou, Quebec, right now that I wasn't able to attend because of session, but my deputy minister is there in attendance, working with the two Ministers from the other territories, Ministers Kenyon and Simailak. They are in agreement on several fundamental principles as to how this money should role out. We have communicated those to the federal government, to the DIAND Minister and to Minister Ethel Blondin-Andrew who has responsibility for this program. The $90 million we feel there was some discussion about doing some funding announcements and trying to role out at least $10 million of that between the three territories this year. We've had further discussion, it's been taking awhile to get project approvals. I think we are at the point now where we would prefer to see us go forward April 1st with the whole $90 million, hold the $10 million this year. It would be very difficult for us to spend that $10 million effectively before year end, so our preference would be to talk about a $90 million strategy next year.

In addition, we are not interested in new administrative mechanisms or regimes that would talk about and determine the rollout of this money. All three territories have economic development agencies that are more than capable of handling this money. We would like to see bilateral deals with the federal government and see us make the decisions on the programs as opposed to a policy committee in Ottawa.

So those are several of the things that we are discussing now and we are hoping that we will have an announcement from Minister Ethel Blondin-Andrew soon in this regard. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.