Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I agree, I concur with the other members that have spoken towards the fact that amalgamation as one of our priorities or part of our business plan was taken quite or interpreted quite liberally by cabinet to mean they could basically amalgamate this whole government into one department. I do not think that was my intent. I recall at the start, like some other members, that it involved one or two small departments. I appreciate cabinet's plan to use this amalgamation process as a way of reducing costs by reducing duplication.

On the other hand, when I came here I thought I was going to have input into, not all, but most major decisions of cabinet, to some degree. I realize that I am not on the Government Operations committee and I am not in cabinet but, at the same time, major changes to policy such as this, I would appreciate input and I do not believe I have had the opportunity.

I definitely think that I do not agree with the amalgamation of Transportation into a social envelope such as Housing. I do not think we have addressed, either, which one of the envelopes is actually going to be responsible for this new department, if it is ever formed, because all these departments are in separate envelopes. I do not know if that was ever addressed by the members but I am sure that I was never involved in that discussion.

I firmly believe that Transportation, in particular, is an engineering department and it should not be amalgamated in to the social envelope. I think that a lot more thought yet is needed before we could even consider putting these three departments into one. I have to refer to the fact that, I can recall when DPW was Public Works and Highways, at one time, and, if I remember rightly, it was when the government took over arctic airports that the government decided to take highways and put it into a department that would be responsible for airports and all transportation. I think there was probably a lot of thought put into that at the time that it was done. I am sure there must have been a lot of thought, there must have been a lot of justification for that. So, I am wondering why we are pushing this thing back to what it used to be, with housing included now.

I really think that cabinet did proceed far beyond what was approved by the ordinary members. What I find embarrassing is when employees of this government walk up to me with pink slips and show me pink slips that mean they have basically been laid off and they ask me why I have done it. I have to respond that, I do not know, I was not involved in the decision. As far as I know there was no decision made. But they have the pink slip in their hand to prove it. Now, how are we going to reverse that? How are we going to reverse the fact that we have given out pink slips when the decision has not really been made by the Assembly? I find it embarrassing to have to say to someone that I do not know.

I do not really know even now, maybe the Premier will clarify to me and to those people with those pink slips how the thing is going to be addressed if, in fact, you do not get amalgamation of these three departments and it does not affect as many employees as we thought. I do not know how this is going to be addressed. I feel a little bit embarrassed about the whole situation. I know that, basically, I have to tell the person that I cannot speak to the thing because maybe it is involved in a new business plan for this year. So, I cannot speak to it without letting out the business plan, but the person already knows the business plan better than I do. So, I am caught in a bad situation in that case.

So, Mr. Chairman, in regards to amalgamation of these three departments at this time, if I could summarize. I am not sure even with more information or opportunity to discuss this further that I would ever be in favour of putting Transportation in with the social envelope. But I believe that, definitely, we, as an Assembly, have to have more input and we have to indicate clearly to cabinet whether we support some of these new policies they are coming up with. Thank you.