Thank you, Mr. Chairman. A lot of ink and time has been devoted to the issue here. It was, I think, a very useful and decisive move that the pipeline group, lead by Imperial Oil, took the decision to declare not a halt, but a major slow down to all their work, and the message in that was that it signalled that they did not have the confidence to proceed at the same rapid pace as they have had related to political and regulatory problems.

It seems that in the month or five weeks since they took that move, a lot has happened. Indeed, it focussed our minds. We got Ottawa, as the Premier said, to give this project more recognition and urgency and vitality than I've ever heard from them. It certainly jolted northern leaders to revisit this immense project and test our commitment to it. I think for a while there, Mr. Chairman, it seemed that we really did have our legs back under us. We were firing on all cylinders and there was a sense of renewed confidence, especially for the people who live in the affected communities up and down the valley who have been looking for the related job and related development work on this project and the investors in communities like Inuvik. Unfortunately, we're hearing the brakes are being put on the kind of investment this project is going to need in that community.

I haven't heard that the momentum has been maintained, Mr. Chairman, since we did get our legs and, as I say, we started firing on all cylinders. Whatever analogies you want to make, I'm not seeing the movement along with the sort of urgency and expediency that we all felt was required.

The Premier has been quite candid with us this afternoon in saying that there is indeed a pace in the successive negotiations that is starting to become an issue now. In trying to make a little bit of a list here of all the different levels and layers of negotiations that are going on, there's the one on the start-up talks for $100 million on the social and infrastructure funding, there are the longer-term negotiations on the resource revenue sharing and devolution regarding all the resources in the Northwest Territories, the negotiations going on between the pipeline group and the First Nations on impact benefit agreements. I don't know that I've even heard when the next meeting date has been set here. So aside from a lot of people saying the right things and nodding in the right direction, are we really that much further ahead in terms of getting this project back on track and advancing it than we were a few months ago?

The Premier is quite correct; Ottawa is the major player here. They are under extreme distraction right now. The sense of frustration comes back again. What can we do to restore the sense of partnership and teamwork and unity that this incredible project could mean for all of Canada, but yet it lags again?

So if we can shake this in any way it's to ask the Premier on those three different sets of negotiations that at least seem to be apparent on the infrastructure, the impact in our communities, on the resource revenue sharing process, and on the IBA negotiations. Is there indeed sort of a process and a framework that we can anticipate, or are things as much in the air as we might be lead to believe? Thank you, Mr. Chairman.