Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I thank the Minister for that information that he provided. I have to commend the Minister for his push for a more coordinated approach for various departments to develop better program models to deal with resource impact development.
I just wanted to make my comments short. I know there are a lot of other things to go through and I don't think $120,000 is an exorbitant amount of money, but I think it's the principle of the matter that a lot of the Members were talking about over the past few years. The resource impact assessments and models that have been taking shape over the past several years are at the development of the diamond mines and other larger projects over the past couple of legislative assemblies. I wonder why all of a sudden, the Department of Finance, with all its wisdom over these changes that have been taking place over the last couple of assemblies and the programs that have been taking shape due to the impacts of the resource development over the past few years, how is this one position going to help make all these program models better for the government and for the people of the NWT?
I have to agree with some of the other Members. I think the amount of professionals we have in FMBS, Finance
and RWED and various other departments, insofar as dealing with the impacts on our dollars and our spending expenditures and operations, I am sure there are already statistics out there that can give us a pretty good assessment on what these impacts entail and what we have to do to support more resource development and to integrate some of this information into our business planning cycles. I just wanted to ask the Minister why this position has suddenly come to light after the diamond mines are going full speed ahead and we've got a couple of major projects on the horizon. I just want to know why there hasn't been any kind of model or assessment for impact on resource development taken place in the past.