Thank you, Mr. Chairman. To marry up the suppliers and the artisans with potential customers, we have the staff in the department who work very much with the artisans, contact them, discuss what they're producing, and talk about potential sales outlets and avenues for that. Of course, the website is a big tool in helping us do that and helping us promote these artisans so that the people that are out there, this demand -- this pent-up demand that I would agree with the Member that I think is out there -- the demand knows where to go in terms of finding access, a one point that it can contact to get access to all these artisans and understand what they produce, how much they can produce, the phone numbers so that they can call these people and get access to them.
Over and above that, we have these retail operations that, obviously, as a government, we subsidize. It's difficult to break even in many of these operations and we don't expect initially that the operations will break even, but we've worked and subsidized Dene Fur Clouds and Acho Dene Crafts and Tent and Canvas McPherson, and I expect that the model will be the same in Ulukhaktok. We have to be prepared to make an investment of public money if we want to see these operations get off the ground. Eventually they will be sustainable; I believe that. But in order to make them sustainable, we have to work to brand the goods to build up the value, to add the value, so people recognize the inherent value in these products and are prepared to pay premium dollar for that. Otherwise we'll forever go on having people pay bottom dollar for these crafts and the artisans not understanding how to best market their product, not getting the money that they could for them. So we want to work to brand and build up the interest in these products, and are working to marry artisans with potential customers.
Again, I would admit that we can continue to do more, and if Members have suggestions as to how we can be creative -- and I appreciate the input and the help -- but how we can do a better job in marrying these two, then thank you and we'll take that input and we're certainly willing to work in that respect. Thank you.