Thank you, Mr. Chair, and I thank the Member for his comments. We certainly have worked hard with the communities over the last while to have some good discussion on the projects in the different areas, and different regions, and some of the work that's going to be happening and taking place in Nahanni. We still have a lot of discussions that have to take place, including with the community of Jean Marie on their public access road. We certainly recognize our role in terms of generating employment through our contracts.

I think it should be clear, first of all, that we haven't moved away from negotiated contracts. In fact, we just signed a fairly big contract in the Member's riding and I think we have around three or four other fairly large contracts where they were negotiated. A lot of them are coming to an end. When we do have the negotiated contract process take place, though, we want to ensure that it's there for a reason. It's not there just to generate employment. There is a part of the policy that requires us to look and see if there's going to be skill developed, capacity developed and also assets acquired, and that there's equity participation by the company or the community. So there are a number of things we take into consideration.

In the last while, it's become increasingly more difficult to sit down and just negotiate a contract in the different communities. There is a significant amount of companies that have developed over the last while. They want to acquire some of this work. They're not happy that they don't have an opportunity to at least bid on it or discuss it. So it really makes our rule very difficult. So while we haven't moved away from negotiating contracts, we want to be certain that there is a benefit and how long does it take to develop that benefit. The intention was to build capacity fairly quick, and in some cases we are reaching close to 16 years, 15 years, 18 years. So that's the situation. We really have to review the situation to see what we're trying to achieve.

In some areas of the Northwest Territories where there are settled claims, especially with the Gwich'in, there is an MOU that spells out exactly our targets that we want to ensure that the Gwich'in have in terms of contracts. In other areas, especially in the southern areas, it's a lot more difficult because these are the areas in the Territories where there is no settled land claim. However, there is a large number of the private contractors in the southern part of the Territories, and also in the Sahtu we've seen a huge increase in the number of contractors. So it makes it very difficult just to go out and say we're going to negotiate the contracts, because it's not going to be that easy anymore. There are more people playing the game nowadays and we have to try to give everybody a fair chance, a fair opportunity.