Mr. Speaker, yes, I will pass on those additional questions along to the Premier. As I said, the Premier will be back tomorrow and hopefully he'll be able to answer the Member as soon as possible.

Mr. Speaker, this is an issue that the Premier has been intimately involved in and working on. As I told the House earlier, he is in Edmonton attending meetings. What I will do is pass along the question to the Premier and have him respond to the Member.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I wish to advise Members that the Premier will be absent from the House today to attend a meeting with the Treaty 8 Tribal Council in Edmonton. The Honourable Manitok Thompson will also be absent from the House today to attend a Pauktuutit meeting in Cambridge Bay. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to recognize, once again, the mayor of Kimmirut, formally Lake Harbour, Mayor Kowisa Arlooktoo and councillor Matthew Akavak.

---Applause

Mr. Speaker, I'll try to deal with the three questions but probably not in the order that they were asked. The purpose of the review is to see how we can make the business incentive policy better and how the North can realize more benefits to the business community and to its residents through employment and more northern companies receiving government jobs, etcetera. The review will be completed by April 2nd. Shortly after that a report will be made to the Cabinet and, following that, the Assembly and other MLAs can be consulted. As I indicated before, the responsibility of the business incentive policy will soon be transferred to the Department of Economic Development and Tourism so by the time the report and the recommendations have been completed, another department will be responsible for the program.

Mr. Speaker, we do have some idea of what some of those benefits are. At this point in time, we are trying to quantify them. Some of them include the fact that because of the business incentive policy and other procurement policies, major companies are basically here in Yellowknife and other northern communities, and that's one of the benefits. I will pass on the information, the comments and the ideas of the Member to Cabinet

The other point I made yesterday evening is that the business incentive policy has been under review for quite some time now, and the review is coming to a conclusion. The comments made by the Member and other Members were noted, and will be part of the results of that review.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I heard those same interesting comments yesterday evening during the briefing, and I will pass them on to Cabinet for their information. The other thing that I will do as soon as it's available, is to pass on to the House the analysis of the benefits that we receive with that $20 million or $30 million, whether they be keeping northern companies standing up or keeping people off welfare, etcetera.

Mr. Speaker, as I indicated to Members at the briefing yesterday evening, the responsibility for the policy will be transferred to the Department of Economic Development and Tourism in the coming weeks. However, with this particular question, it is true that the department has estimated that the cost of the policy is between $20 million and $30 million. What the government is doing right now is analysing what benefits we get for that amount of money. Each year, there are contracts valued in the order of $400 million, in total; I believe it's even a bit more than that. But the business incentive policy is a policy of the Cabinet. The comments made by the Member are noted and I will pass them on to Cabinet for information, but at this time there are no plans to put in a one-year delay or suspension of the policy.

Mr. Speaker, I was not aware of this particular situation before this time, but I can commit to work with the Member and see how we can deal with this situation. We will look into the matter.