Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I rise in this House today to offer my thanks and support for the commitment the Minister of Public Works and Services made yesterday to monitor contractors in compliance with the provisions of the business incentive policy.
I think the Members will agree that we have seen too many of these parachute contractors who promise the world when bidding on the contract, but when the work starts, the vast majority of employees are from the south.
Ensuring compliance with the contract and possibly even revoking the contract is a positive step and will make these parachute contractors take notice. I would also like to thank the Department of Transportation for negotiating the right-of-way brush clearing contract with the local of Fort Providence aboriginally-owned contractors both this year and over the last
several years. This is an important contract to my constituents and I appreciate it.
However, Mr. Speaker, I do have some concerns about highway contractors working in the Fort Providence area that I would like to address. Last summer, a contractor who was doing work over 50 kilometres from Fort Providence did hire a lot of members from my community to start the project to work on the highway. However, Mr. Speaker, as I drove back and forth to Yellowknife on business over the summer, I was dismayed to see less and less of my people employed on the construction. There are probably lots of reasons this happened, Mr. Speaker, or, Madam Speaker...
---Laughter