Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I wish to advise Members that the Honourable Jim Antoine will be late arriving in the House today. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the secretary to Cabinet, Liz Snider, has been having discussions, I believe yesterday but definitely this morning, with the Clerk of the Privy Council and they are going to now engage in discussions that will outline where we go from here. At the political level, we have done the necessary groundwork, we believe, to get some work initiated and once there has been some discussion, we will provide some detail on how we will proceed over the next month. As I said earlier, Mr. Speaker, I will try to provide some detail as early as I can, perhaps Monday, or later next week. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The formula financing arrangement, in itself, will be one area where there is an acknowledgement by the Prime Minister that there are unique fiscal challenges in the North and the federal government has indicated they are prepared to address that through a process of engaging their officials with ours. So that's one area where that will be addressed. The other is just in the many other programs and funding arrangements that the federal government takes up that's outside of the formula where very often the territories are not treated fairly. The Prime Minister, again, has indicated that area will be addressed as well. So how the process will begin and how it will be described, we will need a few days to address that. We are sure the officials will get that clarified and once that's done, we will provide the details to the House. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I don't have any details at this time. I spent a lot of yesterday afternoon travelling, so I know when I left Edmonton this morning, I was talking to the secretary to Cabinet, Liz Snider, who was already having some discussions with Alex Himelfarb, so perhaps on Monday we will be able to give the Members in this House an update. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, it is important to acknowledge, as well, the incredible work of the staff, Liz Snider and Melody Morrison, George Braden, during the time he was engaged on that as well, Gabriela Sparling. There are so many of the staff that were involved in helping us get through this exercise. We'll thank them in due course. I just wanted to acknowledge them. The $60 million was offered up as a short-term revenue to bridge us to the point where we will look at long-term solutions and the Prime Minister, as I said, asked Alex Himelfarb, the Clerk of the Privy Council, to look at a process that would adjust the funding inadequacies between the federal government and this government. The difficulties are created by per capita funding and to find some remedies in the next couple of months and report back to us on how we can address that. Hopefully, we will not have to have a whole series of battles every time federal funding and programs are made available across this country that would see us receive only a marginal amount because of our small population. So that's the reason for it. The Prime Minister and Mr. Himelfarb indicated yesterday morning it is a floor, so it's a minimum amount at this time. We are going to look at ways of enhancing that and, in any case, it is for the short term.

The important thing to acknowledge here, which I tried to do yesterday, is we are on good speaking terms again with the Prime Minister's office, with Anne McLellan, who has agreed to come up in the last two weeks of March to visit and see for herself the circumstances and unique challenge of providing services to people in the North, in particular in the area of health and social services. We will report back to the Prime Minster who says he knows all that already. Just to acknowledge that one of the things we've achieved and captured, which is essential for us, which is a good relationship with the Government of Canada, the federal government, and we have that with the Prime Minister continuing to work with us and having Minister Manley pay some attention to this, to work with our Minister of Finance Joe Handley and the relationship and attention of Anne McLellan to work on this issue with us as well. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, over two weeks ago at the First Ministers' meeting, the Prime Minister put some money on the table and it was to be provided across Canada on a per capita basis. We said that at that time we could not accept that because it did not provide adequate resources for the northern territories, and the Yukon Premier and the Nunavut Premier and myself walked out in protest. Yesterday morning, the Prime Minister acknowledged again that per capita was not treating the territories fairly and indicated that $60 million would be provided as a floor for the three territories to be provided over three or five years, and other adjustments would be made on the long term and that the Clerk of the Privy Council, Alex Himelfarb, would be the lead official to begin that process. Officials were talking briefly yesterday and again this morning on initiating that discussion. We have received, from the Prime Minister of course, an acknowledgment that the issue had to be addressed and we were right to take issue with it and they do not agree with the way we read the issue but we had a very good meeting yesterday morning at 24 Sussex. The three MPs were there with us and we thanked them for their support and work in the background trying to get everyone to come together and to move on with this issue. All in all, Mr. Speaker, I am particularly pleased with the fact that there were no casualties, no one has been sidelined or diminished as a result of this extraordinary series of events. The Prime Minister is still good with us, accessible to us, he's engaged on this issue and the three Members of Parliament are staying with us. The Premiers are still standing with us as well and no officials have been harmed or unduly stressed so it seems to be, at this stage anyway, a classic happy story. Everyone is feeling relatively good and we are all agreeing on what it is we need to do. Thank you.

---Applause

Secondly, I wish to table the following document, entitled The 2003 First Ministers' Accord on Health Care Renewal, February 5th, which was attended by the Prime Minister. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, I wish to table two documents. The first is a document agreed to by the Premiers at their meeting in Toronto earlier this month. That is called the First Ministers' Accord on Sustaining and Renewing Health Care for Canadians.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, there are different ways in which we provide support to communities and ways in which we try to meet the needs of communities and be able to provide funds. We provide funds through Municipal and Community Affairs; Resources, Wildlife and Economic Development; the Department of Justice; and, Health and Social Services. As well, there are always some programs from the federal government that are provided to different communities as well. It would be interesting to see what suggestions are made by this committee as to how we could improve allocation support to the small, non-tax-based communities that would be different from the manner in which we provide support now. So we will probably wait for the final report of the committee to address such an overwhelming question at this time. Thank you.