Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I wanted to touch on the issue of these lay-off notices. Notice of lay-off as opposed to employees being laid off. When we talk about notice of lay-off, we talk about it as if it is nothing and it can just be reversed and you can just tell a person, you got your job back. I do not how many of you have had lay-off notices lately but I am telling you the risks and effects of a notice of lay-off has some fairly serious ramifications. One of the risks is you can lose some of your good employees. You issue a notice of lay-off and do not think for one minute that those employees are not scanning the market looking for a new job. You can lose some very valuable staff that way.
Another thing is that it affects their moral and their performance on the job. It is not a thing to be taken lightly, a notice of lay-off. I am concerned about that. Just to say well, we can reverse it but we need to hand them because if the proposed amalgamation goes ahead, we have to implement it by April 1st, 1997.
I am going back to the question I asked a few minutes ago. I did not get an answer to this. This is a time line we are talking about. Lay-off notices would have to be out in the mail by January 1st in order to implement amalgamation on April 1st, 1997, because that would be the 90 day requirement. Right? As far as I know, this House is adjourning today. If we were going to have an open and public debate in this House on amalgamation, my question that did not get answered before is, when was that supposed to take place? When were we going to do that? We are not coming back here to Yellowknife until the middle of January. So, I do not know when we were going to do that. That is still a concern and question I have. I think everybody should really, seriously consider the risks of tentatively laying the employees off and then changing your mind 60 to 90 days later, or when it is convenient to this government. I have a problem with that.
Can I speak to the point of order, Mr. Chairman? No, I cannot, okay. Thank you.