Thank you, Madam Chair. Number one, I would have to disagree with the Member's comment about the government not doing its duty on behalf of protecting the taxpayer. As Cabinet is sworn in, we take an oath. Every government, every Assembly has taken an oath to do its part and do the business of governing in a way that follows the rules of governing. If there are occasions that that hasn't been followed, then we as Members of the Assembly have to pull that into question and possibly take someone out with non-confidence. Let me assure the Member that I don't intend to put myself and my Cabinet colleagues in a position of having to be questioned in that manner. We will do our work with due diligence to ensure the best decision is being made on behalf of residents of the Northwest Territories.
I can't speak for past governments and what they've worked on and why they arrived at a final decision, but my duty here for the 15th Assembly is to ensure that the deals
we do have are deals that are viable going forward. From this discussion that we've had on this amount of the budget, I would take to my Cabinet colleagues that we must be very wary of any deal going forward, whether or not the debenture being looked at is a risky one. But I also have to remind Members that we have a number of lending agencies within this government that do not have a very good record of its loans. We have examples of the Business Credit Corporation, the NWT Development Corporation, which has built in subsidies for salaries and so on. So we do have programs within the Government of the Northwest Territories and we know there are going to be some losses and we account for that.
In this case, because it was a new industry -- diamonds in Canada, never mind the Northwest Territories -- governments decided this was the avenue to take. We will continue to honour the process of informing Members of any new commitments or guarantees that will be provided. We will continue to honour those things and I'll commit to the Member if any case comes forward to myself as Minister and to the FMB, we will be using due diligence to ensure that the taxpayer is protected in this whole exercise. Thank you.