Thank you, Mr. Roland. Supplementary, Mr. Braden.

Mr. Speaker, I believe that there are options out there; we just have to be bold enough to go out there and put the case on the table. There's one very apparent one that comes immediately to mind in the Aboriginal Development Corporation who, through land claims settlements and cash injections to the Government of Canada, are, I think, very well positioned to be major players in finding an answer to this solution. Are the Aboriginal Development Corporations and First Nations on that list in our toolbox, Mr. Speaker?

Thank you, Mr. Braden. Mr. Roland.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, again, I think we can show examples of how we've partnered with other governments from across the territory, aboriginal governments in some of the initiatives, either through supporting them through negotiated contracts in the smaller communities to help build housing, as well as universal partnership agreements in delivery of the housing program in those communities. There's definitely an option there. At the end of the day even for example in the community of Inuvik, a developer wants a core tenant to be there to make sure that they can afford and they are making a good decision in building multi-unit apartment buildings and so on. They want somebody to backstop that investment. That takes dollars. We're trying to wrestle with that in the big picture. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Roland. Your final supplementary, Mr. Braden.

Mr. Speaker, this is an issue across Canada, but it's so acute here across Northern Canada. Has the Finance Minister taken this extremely serious situation up with his counterparts in the other territories to see what we could do if we linked arms and moved this along? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Braden. Mr. Roland.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, when I meet with my counterparts from the other jurisdictions in the finance area, we use the information we have available to us; the housing information, the cost of living factors and we use that to build our argument to try to get more revenues to our own jurisdictions. So when I go down to meet with Minister Goodale, I'm carrying in my briefcase or my backpack the arguments we've developed in the Northwest Territories to try to convince them in fact we need more dollars to deliver the same level of programs that southern Canadians have already. The cost of living is extreme in the North. We realize that and we're trying to get the rest of Canada to realize that, too. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Roland. Item 7, oral questions. The honourable Member for Range Lake, Ms. Lee.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of RWED in his capacity as the Minister responsible for the BIP. I would like to know if the Minister and the Cabinet have decided whether or not to waive the BIP with respect to 22 additional mobile homes under the market housing initiative. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Lee. The honourable Minister of Resources, Wildlife and Economic Development, Mr. Bell.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The same rules will apply for phase two as they did for phase one. At that point when the decision was made to waive the BIP on the procurement of the mobile homes, it was for the life of the program. So there's no difference between this phase and the prior purchase under phase one. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Bell. Supplementary, Ms. Lee.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, as the Minister responsible for economic development, for fair business practice, for fairness of all in Cabinet, how can he justify the government continuing to waive their own policy in spending $2.5 million? How can he justify that, Mr. Speaker?

Thank you, Ms. Lee. Mr. Bell.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. What's happening here is we haven't rescinded the previous decision. I think this debate was had in the House. I remember specific questions from the Member at that point about it, and obviously our feeling was, as it related to install in communities, we would leave the BIP in place because there was a chance to have value added, there was a chance there would be northern employment out of this. But our feeling was that if the BIP was simply going to be applied so that northern home distributors could make a phone call to Edmonton and get trailers sent up, that there wasn't a lot of value added there and that that was not the best use of public money. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Bell. Supplementary, Ms. Lee.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, if he and this government operates under that policy, how does the government have credibility and justification to force all of the northern multi-national corporations in their obligations to hire northern, buy northern and do things northern? How can the Minister and the government have any credibility in insisting that when they don't even practice their own principle? Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Lee. Mr. Bell.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I think, by and large, obviously, we do practice that principle. On a specific where we think there really will be no value added, no benefit in the North, then the question becomes one of finding a balance. Do you insist that the

BIP be in place and allow, as I've said, a northern middleman to apply an additional mark-up on the units being purchased, Mr. Speaker? That was the debate that we had. How much value was there in that? So what we decided was more important was affordable housing in communities. We've seen that the premise of this program is that they'll be on the cost-recovery basis, and even at that, $1,300 a month in communities for these three-bedroom mobile homes has been a challenge to get them filled. That's why, I believe, the Housing Minister is moving to the smaller units. But if we allowed for the BIP and it added an additional cost, we may have been talking about -- hypothetically, I don't know what the numbers would be -- maybe $1,350 per month, for homes.

We did feel there was value added in the install and the building of the pads for the trailers in communities, and that is why the BIP was applied to that portion of the contract. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Bell. Final supplementary, Ms. Lee.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I would suggest to the Minister, that if you call Mr. Les Rocher in Yellowknife, he would say that there is a lot of value added in doing business in the North and that it is not fair for the government to apply BIP just in 15 percent of the projects and not to larger centres. I think he would tell him that he doesn't appreciate the government competing with him in the whole selling of the mobile home business. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Ms. Lee. I did not hear a question there. Item 7, oral questions. The honourable Member for Great Slave, Mr. Braden.