Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Let me assure the Member that the affirmative action policy will be implemented and any new policy that comes forward will be implemented, as well. The concern he has raised is a legitimate concern; it's not the first time that it's been raised in this Legislative Assembly. The issue of nepotism has been raised before; of people hiring their relatives or good friends;

issues like that. Having a stand-alone Personnel Department never did stop that. I believe that by empowering the managers and by holding managers accountable, the buck will stop at their door. They will be held accountable and dealt with accordingly if they do not follow the policies of this government.

I would use this forum to publicly say that if anybody is aware of people doing that, please let your MLA, myself or anyone know and we will follow it up. We do have a process in place to follow up concerns about people getting hired and not going through the proper process. We will follow it up.

The good thing about amalgamating Personnel into the departments is that you now have one manager accountable and one manager only. One Minister, as well; people that you elect to sit in this Legislative Assembly to represent you. We will not only hold the deputies accountable, we will hold those Ministers accountable, as well.

It is up to them to make sure that the policies of this government are adhered to. As far as people putting in requests for specific students, I'm not aware of this. It should follow proper procedure and should be done properly.

You are absolutely right that Mr. Todd did try to negotiate with the union to get a better value for our dollar to be able to hire more students. We could hire more students and we can get better use of our dollars if we are allowed to do that. We have discussed this before, as a government, and Mr. Dent is going to be looking at a cost-sharing arrangement with the private sector, as well, so that we can find a way to get the best value for our buck and hire more students. One of the priorities of this government is education, and every student should have a summer job when he or she comes back to the North. We can no longer afford to pay $22, $20 or $18 an hour. If we were able to pay $14, $12 or $16, we could hire a lot more students.

As far as the concern that Mr. Erasmus raised, Mr. Chairman, that concern has been raised before and it's always looked into. It's not because of Personnel amalgamating into the departments; this is not the first time I'm hearing it. Thank you.