Thank you, Madam Chair. The department has been intimately involved in the development of the government's position at the negotiating tables about or with self-government negotiating tables and is working at or has always worked at providing an analysis of positions to self-government entities so that they get an understanding of what positions this government has that are delivering services in their communities and where those sorts of responsibilities lie.

In terms of developing an overall government-wide plan for how positions develop, the department is prepared to work with every department. So the Department of HR has, for instance, worked with Health and Social Services on an overall human resource plan. It's working with FMBS at developing an overall human resource plan. But it's difficult to take it on a government-wide basis to say this is where the plan should be, because as legislative priorities change, for instance as we put more money into nurses or into teachers, that changes the priority for what hiring takes place. So it's difficult to say from a centralized position that this is where your human resource development is going to take place. As we have, for instance, this year said with reduction of the PTR, we know that's going to lead to more teachers in the communities. It's not going to happen, I mean, that's where the teachers are going to wind up if that's where the schools are because we've already committed that, you know, our government has said that the smaller communities will see a preponderance of the value in that PTR reduction.

So HR is prepared to work, but it really needs to be on a department-by-department basis because we have to react to priorities that are set by this Legislative Assembly, because this Assembly changes directions sometimes on which departments are priorities for development. So we have to be able to follow that.