Supplementary, Madam Speaker. I'm not sure I understand why we would have to cross-reference them, but I guess I can assume that's the reason employers would also have to supply the social insurance number of all employees who worked in the Northwest Territories. The form also asks for employers to provide the gross annual remuneration -- actually, it says renumeration here -- subject to payroll tax of each employee, the gross remuneration paid to each employee and the total amount of tax collected from each employee. Still, Madam Speaker, I'm not sure why we need all of this information other than perhaps a big brother syndrome. In particular, why does the department need to know the total amount of tax collected from each employee? This form doesn't say payroll tax, it says tax collected. So why does this department need to know how much total tax was collected from each employee?

Madam Speaker, there is an organization called the International Standards Organization which has been working on behalf of a great many countries to develop and draft proposed standards for what would be called acceptable standards for trapping. Those are considered humane or fall within the definition of quick kill. As Members should be aware, it's our belief that organizations such as the international animal rights organizations, when they first proposed to try to wipe out the fur industry, by demanding certain standards they thought we would not be able to meet them. However, we have, for instance, banned the leghold trap for most small species. The progress we've made in meeting the demands of the Europeans, but also ourselves within Canada has been very good. Now that they see the progress, it is our view that many of the animal rights activists are now trying to discredit the work to develop acceptable standards for any type of trapping. They are suggesting that all trapping is inhumane and, therefore, no standard is acceptable. One of the organizations that is now being attacked is this International Standards Organization. It met recently in Ottawa and some of the animal rights activists came in from Europe and were directly involved in some of the discussions and lobbying. What has resulted is no decisions by this organization to accept the draft standards. They will defer to individual countries to make up their own mind to be decided later if standards are acceptable or not. So there is some cause for concern. Those are the developments to date. Thank you.

Thank you. Madam Speaker, the European Commissioner, part of the European Parliament, is set up by the member countries. It is the administrator/management body that works and carries out some of the decisions made by the European Parliament. It is this commission that has asked its underlings to draft a report that would assess whether or not the regulations passed by the European Parliament are being met, what is the definition of "significant progress," and whether these middle-management staff can muster up some substantive arguments for saying certain countries, for instance Canada, has made significant progress, therefore, should be granted the additional year as laid out in the regulation. Again, we have questions about that, and some concerns I personally have, because some of the staff involved are known animal rights activists.

I am hoping that they carry out the work professionally, aside from their own very strong personal biases and follow the spirit and intent of the regulations, which would be very clear that Canada has made significant progress and should be allowed the additional one year to meet the remainder of the demands set out under the European regulations. Thank you.

There was a technical committee set up by the international standards organization, which has approximately 120 countries that belong to it. The technical committee set up had seven countries involved in it. One of the things the animal rights activists are doing now is questioning whether or not these member countries are unbiased enough to present credible work. So the credibility of the member countries has been under attack by the animal rights activists. As I said, the technical committee presented its work. There is no agreement on how to proceed except to give member countries some time to decide whether or not to accept the work of the technical committee to date. The technical committee may or may not have finished their work or may be at an impasse at this time. But the International Standards Organization continues to exist.

Madam Speaker, under the decisions of the European Parliament, December of 1994 is the closing date for the import of wild furs caught by leghold traps. The debate right now is whether we have to comply with all of the demands of the European Parliament across Canada before we are allowed to continue exporting wild fur to Europe. The consequence of a decision by the European Parliament not to allow extensions or to be very rigid in saying that all of their demands have to be met before they will allow further import of wild fur, would wipe out trapping as an economic activity for the people of the Northwest Territories, and Canada for that matter. That would be the consequence.