Thank you, Madam Chair. It gives me great pleasure to finally get to this part of the budget, which has been talked about here in the media for a number of weeks at the end of August and early part of September when residents were notified that the government took a lead action in trying to mitigate the low water expenditures or low water issue at Snare and Bluefish and took it upon themselves to give a bit of a bird's eye view of what was about to come here today. This has been big in the making and I'm glad we are finally having an ability to talk about this appropriation in its full consideration.

First and foremost, just to give a bit of a background, I'll allow the Minister to maybe give us information indicating... The Public Utilities Board had a hand in offering, from what we heard in conversations on the floor of the House here, extensions.

Can you give an idea of what exactly was going on between the department and the Public Utilities Board in terms of these so-called extensions during this last drought season and what did that mean in relationship to the appropriation we have here before us today? Thank you.