Thank you, Madam Chair. The first one, finalizing discussions with Finance Canada on our formula financing agreement, that's strictly with ourselves right now, the GNWT with the federal government. There have been some discussions with aboriginal governments saying they would like to be involved in the process. Finance Canada is not willing to have that approach taken, so we have continued as a territorial government to take that on as our own initiative as it results in the transfers to this government to operate existing programs and services.
Providing taxation and formula financing input to revenue resource sharing discussions with Canada and aboriginal governments and the next bullet, continued fiscal taxation input to self-government negotiations, those are tied together. Self-government tables are discussing taxation initiatives, sharing tax room. The federal government has agreed, for example, with the Tlicho to look at giving up some tax room to them and that then puts the pressure on us to look at what we are doing in the Northwest Territories and how that would impact on us in the Northwest Territories. So there is that ongoing side of the taxation with self-government discussions. There is talk right now at a number of the tables of taking the tax room available and using it for net benefit for their own programs and services. What we say is we would look at tax sharing, but along with that tax sharing comes the burden that's with it now, running existing programs and services. The territorial government right now, as we all know -- that's why we are having to reduce programs and reallocate dollars -- can't afford what we are doing today. So we have little to no tax room to give up.
We say if they want to take some of the tax room, then they have to take the corresponding amount of burden with that and moving forward in those directions. It's still very early in the discussions, but that's something we have to be prepared to look at as the territorial government. Again, what agreements the aboriginal governments make with the federal government can have an impact on us, and we are going to the federal government and discussing with them those potential impacts and asking them to be ready to mitigate those impacts on the GNWT when they give up the tax room and give up some net fiscal benefit to aboriginal governments. We have to be the backstop because we don't have the dollars to continue programs and services if the federal government foregoes some of those taxes. Thank you.