Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The committee, Cultural Enhancement Committee, did get together a couple of times in this past year. The first meeting was more or less an organizational meeting for themselves to look at how they were going to operate, what things they thought they could look at. Then the second meeting that they had they did go over quite a number of issues, looked at around the building. but their main focus for the first meeting and the first year that they were in operation was more in the conservation end of things, and looked around the building at what's in the building right now, what's in danger of maybe being damaged and needs more attention as far as preserving any art that we have in the building.
They were instrumental in coming forward with some recommendations to, well one of them was the use of hot food in the caucus room to protect the paintings that we have in there, made some suggestions as to what we should be doing to try and mitigate any damages that we might be causing to the artwork in there. They also made recommendations to build a stand for the caribou carving, whale bone carving that's outside of the Members' offices, to protect that a little bit. It's sitting right down on the carpet and the commission was worried about having some damage done to that, whether it's cleaning people with vacuum cleaners or whatever. So they recommended that a base be built for that. They also recommended that some display cabinets be built for the previous Speakers' robes that are on display here. So those were some of the issues that they looked at.
The funding, of course, is very tight for the commission. We only had at that time I think $10,000 to work with, and with that amount of money they did some recommendations in those areas. They also had putting up the banners up in the Great Hall. So going forward, they have a number of issues that they want to look at in the coming year, but again, the funding is going to be very tight for them to operate on. We only have a budget of some $20,000 for them to operate in. But they do have some of what they want to look at in the next year; they had a couple of areas that they want to see. There's an area on the outside of the Great Hall on the curved wall that they would like to have some artwork put up there that would include some Delta braid and different cultures in the Northwest Territories on display there. There was another one, too, that they were going to put up...Oh yes, also they made a recommendation that we look at commissioning the work for a large teepee out front of the building on the grounds somewhere that's representative
of the cultures in the territory. So those are some of the issues that they're hoping to be able to come forward in this next year. Again, it's going to be depending very much, though, on the amount of money that they have to spend. Last year was more preserving what we do have now and then going forward looking at different areas where we can promote the building and promote the different cultures of the territory within the building. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.