I acknowledge the concern raised by the chairman of the ABC committee. This issue of the cost of living in the North and the fact that our present pensions do not differentiate between a person living in southern Canada, which many of our workers are forced to do, and people living in northern Canada, presents a hardship to those people. I think this is definitely one thing that must be examined in the legislative review that will be undertaken.
I want to thank the Member for those comments. It is certainly something that I think should be looked at, and I want to inform the committee that I met with the Workers' Compensation Board yesterday. We talked about initiating the first stage of the legislative review, co-operatively between myself and the WCB as quickly as possible, bearing in mind a goal of having a legislative action paper in place by the end of this calendar year. And that is certainly an issue that will have to be dealt with along with the hunters and trappers issue, along with concerns about the lump sum payment policy. There are many other issues that have to be dealt with.
In the meantime, I think It is progress that we are adjusting the supplementary pensions and the YMIR in the interim, but I fully understand that this is only the start of legislative reform.