Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, the funding that the Member is referring to is the $1.3 million that MACA has brought forward and allocated to the number of different communities based on the level of impact, and this funding was identified as something that was needed through our conference that we hosted in Inuvik in December.

A lot of the community governments came forward and indicated that there was very little and, in some cases, practically no resources out there to assist them to deal with the many demands that were being placed on them as a result of this Mackenzie gas project on top of other things that they were being asked to do in the area of resource development. It was not an area that we expected to fund as a government. Initially we expected the federal government or the proponent to come forward with some of these resources. Our concern has been that there are limited resources for a lot of these communities to deal with the number of issues that are coming forward.

We did come forward with a funding mechanism to Cabinet for consideration. It was approved. In our plans, we identified 21 communities that were affected. The methodology that we used to identify the communities was through the Mackenzie gas project environmental impact statement. They identified the communities that they felt had potential direct or indirect impacts. Through that we made out our list of communities that would qualify for that funding.

The $30,000 that is available includes all these communities, plus Yellowknife. The reason we added Yellowknife is because Yellowknife was the only community that did not fall into that category, however, is an intervener in the review process.

In our view, as the Member has indicated, we agree that all the communities are going to be impacted in some way; however, we felt that there was a need to put more money into some of the communities that were going to be impacted more and at the same time provide some resources to the other communities to deal with any requirements to plan, review or assess any potential impacts or opportunities on the community or by the community as a result of this pipeline construction. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.