Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I believe I am scheduled to table in this House early next week the sports and recreation policy. It is not signed off at this point, but it will be there for Members to make comments on and get back to us. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, my information is that they are a part of the interim coordinating team. They are working with departments to establish the sports north council. Officially what it will be called in the future is sports and recreation council. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, since the last session in June, I have met with Sport North and the Aboriginal Sports Circle to discuss the issues that were raised in the House at the June session, and the end result of that was that Sport North agreed to continue working towards establishing an NWT sports and recreation board which is now known as a council. Over the summer, the interim coordinating team which Sport North is taking part in, although cautiously, met three times and they were planning another meeting I believe for September 26. I am not sure if that one was held or not, but they are still working towards establishing the board. My intent is to have a document tabled in the House in the next few days, outlining the sports and recreation policy that I have planned to put in place early in October. With that, there will also be changes to the lottery regulations. Once that happens what would be left to do then is to have the sports and recreation board officially established, possibly by April of next year. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yes, I will commit to supplying that information to the Members through the House.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I can commit to the Member that I will take this back to the department and we will review our purchasing programs.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The department is well aware of the concerns raised by the Member and raised by the business sector as well. However, Public Works did take the issue to the Senior Management Preference Committee with regard to how to award the BIP preference in relation to where the computers were going. In the first instance in March, all computers were going to Yellowknife, so Yellowknife had the BIP preference and they did win the contracts. In the second incident recently, there were two contracts awarded to Yellowknife again because the majority of the computers were going to Yellowknife. So Yellowknife bidders were given, again, BIP preference. Public Works and Services was advised by the Senior Management Preference Committee to prorate the BIP preference based on the number of computers gong to different regions. Like the Member stated, Mr. Speaker, those communities, like Yellowknife, that had most of the computers obviously got the benefit of the BIP as well. So they were the ones the contracts were awarded to. Public Works advised that as an example in the last purchase of computers, there was a savings of $55,000. That indicates to us that we should continue with large purchases rather than breaking the requirements down into smaller tenders.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the Town of Hay River put in their expenditure statements at $18,885 and the First Nation put in $10,397 as claims. However, whether the town is in a good financial situation or not has no bearing on the policy. We would have paid if we felt that it was widespread and that proper steps were taken to prevent damages. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the recommendation the department and myself took to Cabinet was that we would not pay compensation. There was a committee established to review compensation requests. Their recommendation was that we don't pay compensation, and I accepted the recommendation and took it to Cabinet, and that's what the ruling in Cabinet was. We weren't going to pay compensation.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, we did receive the total for all individuals and I have a total here for West Channel Village $66,946; the Hay River Reserve was $3,020; and the Hay River Reserve new village was $3,400. The overall total for all individual claims was $102,000.