Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to follow up on my Member’s statement from earlier today and have my questions addressed to the Premier. Fifteen-hundred dollars is a lot of money for one day’s work. It’s about what our more well-paid citizens make in a week and more than a minimum wage employee makes in a month.

Obviously we would only pay such fees for things we couldn’t possibly do with in-house skills and resources. If that service is to get us access to the federal government leadership -- and this is in reference to the contracts I tabled the beginning of the week -- why are we unable to do that for ourselves with the highly skilled and paid people now on the Premier’s staff?