Thank you, Mr. Chairman. When determining where budget reductions are going to be made and where lay-offs might occur, the first emphasis is on where the savings can be achieved, and as a result of identifying the savings, what happens is that the staff who currently provide those services or who are in those areas are the first who are considered for lay-off, and, at that point, the determination of who gets a lay-off notice is based on who does the job that is no longer going to be done. However, when the lay-off notice is actually issued, those individuals have the highest level of staffing priority across the Government of the Northwest Territories, in other regions and in their own communities. Staffing priority means that things like length of service, affirmative action -- all those kinds of things are taken into account in deciding how people will be reassigned and, in many cases -- I can think of some of the more recent ones in Public Works and Services, particularly when we've talked about aboriginal staff -they've been quite successful in obtaining jobs in other locations because they have been given priority hiring status.

But we don't do the assessment of who should be laid off on the basis of length of service or anything like that. It's who is actually doing the work that will no longer be done. People get preference following that.