Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This is part of the health renewal money under Prime Minister Martin. That was announced back in 2003, where three northern Premiers walked out to get this deal. The implementation took another year or two, so we are on our last year of five-year funding whereby the federal government has provided $150 million for all three territories. There are different components to it, but we have been able to use that money to train and hire nurse practitioners. There is money going to medical travel. There is money spent on midwifery programming. There are all kinds of good things that have been done as a result of this funding. It works out to about $10 million yearly for the GNWT. The headquarters of this administration is in Whitehorse. This is coming due. It is going to expire next fiscal year. Sorry; year 2009-10.

As I discussed yesterday, northern Health Ministers including myself met with Minister Aglukkaq on January 8th . They had about an hour and a half

meeting. It was a very good meeting in that probably very rarely we are meeting with federal counterparts and you don’t have to explain who you are and what this program is. In fact, she was more senior of all three of us, so she is well aware of the difference that this funding has made. We have agreed to have our staff work together to do necessary evaluations so that we can help her move this program forward.

Now, I have to tell you, we don’t have any commitments from the federal government that they are going to renew this, but they are very well aware that we need to have a really good indication that this will be renewed by the beginning of the next business cycle for the federal government, which is this spring. So we have asked Minister Aglukkaq to please let us know where they are going with this funding.