Thank you, Mr. O'Reilly. Just a reminder to committee: we're looking at pages 34, with information found on page 35 to 38. With that, we go to Mr. Lovely.

Thank you, Mr. Lovely. Mr. O'Reilly.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. That's a helpful explanation, but what I see here is support over time declining for our arts and performers. Is that the case? Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. O'Reilly. Minister Moses.

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and just further to Mr. Lovely's comments earlier, we did change it so it would be easier for artists to get the contributions, moving it from the grants down to the contributions. Funding hasn't really changed; we still give strong support there. It's just in terms of how we set up these agreements with northern performers. I'll go to Mr. Lovely for a little bit more clarification on that. Thank you

Thank you, Minister Moses. Mr. Lovely.

Thank you, Mr. Lovely. Mr. O'Reilly.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. That's a very helpful explanation, and I can see it now.

I also note that the NWT Arts Council in 2014, they developed a strategic plan. Are there any plans by the department to increase our support for arts and performers? Thanks, Mr. Chair. Sorry, and the reason why I say that, Mr. Chair, is this is an area of our economy that has tremendous paybacks; it can help diversify our economy, showcase our culture. Is this something that the department is looking at increasing, say, funding to the NWT Arts Council and/or Support to Northern Performers? Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. O'Reilly. Minister Moses.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Our department continues to collaborate with other departments such as ITI when we're supporting Northern performers, Northern artists. In this budget there is no increase, just for confirmation. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Minister Moses. Mr. O'Reilly.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. I'm glad I got a straight answer there from the Minister; I appreciate that. I guess, though, is this an area that the department is prepared to do some more work on by developing its own strategy or action plan around support for performing arts and our artists here in the Northwest Territories? So can you make that commitment to begin work on a strategy or an action plan of some sort? Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. O'Reilly. Minister Moses.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. We do have an arts strategy. It is probably a few years old, but we can take a look at it again and evaluate how it's working. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Minister Moses. Mr. O'Reilly.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. I'm just skimming through this section to see if I've got anything else. I think most of my questions were already asked by my colleagues. Sorry, there's one here. Public library services have been declining over time. Can someone from the department tell us what's going on? Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. O'Reilly. Mr. Lovely.

Thank you, Mr. Lovely. Mr. O'Reilly.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. My apologies. I should have pointed to page 34, and the line item is public library services. It has declined in 2016 from $2,048,000 to this year. It is now $1.888 million, so it has been declining over time. Are we just cutting the funding to this service? Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just to clarify this, the funding to the libraries is not affected. It is something that some of the operations within our own department, we made those reductions. You can rest assured that the public libraries did not see any funding affected.