Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'm sure that Imperial and its partners are still confident the pipeline is going to go ahead. They've spent $350 million or so, so far. They're continuing to spend on it. It's not a matter of confidence and we're still confident it will go ahead. We're going to work on that assumption. I believe the federal government will want to see it happen, too. So there's a fair bit of confidence there. But what Imperial has done is slowed down their spending on it because they have to get over the hurdles on access and benefit agreements and on socioeconomic impacts, the regulatory issues and fiscal certainty, those kinds of issues before they continue to invest heavily on the ground with geotechnical work. Otherwise their investors are going to begin to question what they're doing.

So Imperial has not slowed down. They still have roughly 200 people who are working away every day here on this. A lot of their work is focused on regulatory and on access and benefit agreements and answering requests for more information that have been put forward. So they're dealing with that side of it. They continue, but they have slowed their spending down.

The aboriginal governments continue, to my knowledge, to deal with the access and benefit agreements and they're working with us on socioeconomic impacts. The Deh Cho have their own negotiations going on following their legal challenges to the federal government. I understand that's moving along. So there is a fair bit of negotiating going on between the aboriginal governments, the industry and with the federal government.

The federal government has met with us at the political level. They also have their deputies working on this. The Deputy Prime Minister has appointed a fellow by the name of Horgan. The deputy minister of DIAND is the lead and I believe he's working full time. His time is dedicated full time to pulling this all together on the federal government's behalf. So there is a lot of that work going on.

Our officials were in Ottawa late last week and met with their federal counterparts. I am looking at a meeting as early as Wednesday, more likely on Thursday, and I'm ready to get the permission of Members to go to that as soon as we have that if we do get a meeting.

So things are still moving along. I want to make sure we keep that momentum going and I'll do everything I can to keep this very much a Canadian issue because it is bigger than the Northwest Territories. I want to make sure it's understood that it's a Canadian issue right across the country.

So things are moving along, but I guess I get eager and I want to move this along every week with another meeting at the political level. I realize sometimes you have to be more patient than that. I don't want to give the impression that this is somehow stalled. It hasn't. There's a lot of work going on in the back rooms.

As I said earlier, today I've spoken to two aboriginal leaders from the Northwest Territories who are in Ottawa right now and both of them assured me they're raising this at the aboriginal roundtable with the Deputy Prime Minister, with the Minister of DIAND, with the Prime Minister, and so on as well. So we're continuing to do everything we can. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.