Mr. Speaker, although the briefing did not take place, the information was provided to all MLAs. Mr. Speaker, as we are all aware, over the last number of years with the many changes in government and the many issues that are rising in terms of labour and labour related issues -- whether it comes from decentralization, from having community transfers in place, the employees on reorganization -- the issue of how we're going to handle the adjustment in the work place has been one issue, whenever we make a decision within the government or on the effects of government. I think I can relate to some of the issues.
When we were discussing the major pipeline enquiry, there were a lot of concerns about how our northern workers are going to be handled. What is the role? What can we do? How can we move, in looking after people who are coming from smaller communities within the Northwest Territories to be involved in the work place? What types of protection? Is there protection? Are there ways of giving preferences to northern workers? We're doing a lot of things now that effect how people are employed, how people are going to be dealt with and how issues are going to be handled. How do we involve communities to get maximum benefits?
We have land claims. There are areas in the claims where there have to be priorities on certain areas of land that has to have the aboriginal group involved having priorities. There are so many of those issues that are in place. As new claims get settled, as well, as a government we have an obligation to respect those claims and the priorities and legislation that governs treatment and preferential treatment for the people. All these labour issues are out there. While we're trying to make our decision here, these issues continually come before us.
I know that in certain claims there are provisions and benefit agreements that we're seriously trying to address because we're involved with that. If we want something to go ahead, we have to respect the employment criteria out of those claims.
We have surface land, sub-surface land, town land, industry wanting to come into the north, the desire of northern people to be considered and trained for those employment opportunities. The preferences are inherent in some of the work we do. So, this is a major issue and this is an issue that has plagued us right from the very beginning of time, as we continue to try to live under the obligations of the many areas of special agreements.
The idea with this is to try to involve the general public organizations and people in trying to come to some conclusion how best we, as the Northwest Territories, can address those issues. This was put in place because up to this point in time, even the questions we get in the Legislative Assembly in terms of affirmative action and preference for small local businesses, we're dealing with the best we can.
However, the question on what is our stated policy, what is acceptable to the people of the Northwest Territories, is very important.
This is why we suggested a commission could be in place where people's views, ideas and, preferably, solutions to how we deal with the overall global issue of employment, including people's claims, and how our obligations are going to sit with them. Thank you.