Thank you, Mr. Chair. So I'll start with the fact that it's the studies that are being done now at this point to be able to enable potentially regulations so we need to review the materials that are coming out of those studies to be able to engage on what they mean, because we don't have all of that information yet at this time. But what we do have is a system where we do engage with not just Indigenous governments but also other water partners.

How it works is that we have an Indigenous steering committee that has members from Indigenous governments across the Northwest Territories. And one of them is on the bilateral management committee with the GNWT for the Alberta agreement, for the BC agreement, etcetera. So there's a link back to that. And there's also a committee called the Mackenzie River Basin Board where there's a Indigenous member as well so they go to those meetings and they come back to the Indigenous steering committee and work together that way.

Then we have an annual meeting of water partners, so that includes anyone with interest in water where this matter has come up. You know, it's definitely of interest and we've heard about it the whole time we were developing the water strategy and the action plan. And I think it's important to note that the Minister has provided briefings and responded to concerns from the Dene Nation as well as from the Council of Leaders within the last year on this matter as well. So there's quite a lot of communication that is occurring.

The claims are reflected in the agreements because we couldn't have made an agreement with Alberta that didn't and, of course, we wanted to uphold what's in the claims and those agreements. So there is recognition of substantially unaltered quality, quantity, and rate of flow which is in the claims. Thank you, Mr. Chair.