Mr. Chairman, I do not necessarily need to respond to every Member but I would not mind an occasional chance to clarify some areas. I will do that in very quick order. Some of the Members asked about the impact on staffing levels in the communities. The plan as we have it -- and I have to qualify this because we were following a process where since October we talked about what this new department is going to do as it deals with infrastructure. We avoided trying to design the infrastructure first and then figuring what it is going to do because that is always something that creeps into your mind. As it turns out, learning from past mistakes and looking at other proposals that went ahead before, that is not the right way to go.
The way you do it is to figure out first, what is this department going to do and that will guide you to what it will look like, keeping in mind that you have to minimize the impact on staff. As it turns out the Housing Corporation does not have any staff in the communities. There is staff with the Housing Corporation in Yellowknife and in the regional centres and the district office and a couple of area offices. The Department of Transportation in Nunavut is mostly in the regions. The airports in each community are mostly run by the hamlets and therefore are hamlet employees. Public Works and Services has some maintainers in the communities which would continue.
The question about if we were to do this now would the two new governments have to de-amalgamate, I think the term was. I am trying to be as objective as possible on this and if you really think about it, after division you are going to have in Nunavut, a government that takes care of 27,000 people and in the west a government that takes care of 30,000 people. Very small amounts of people and if you really took those numbers and put them down south, they are no more than small towns.
Each of these departments do carry pretty high levels of bureaucracy. In fact, I believe why a lot of these concerns have been brought forward, is that our bureaucracy in the NWT is large, and has become a fairly large political force compared to the rest of the population, which is something you would not see down south. I am not saying it is a bad thing, I am just saying that is what it is. The other issue about our RWED Department savings, I do not have any information on that but I would imagine that the Minister of that department could provide that. An amalgamation is not necessarily lay-offs across the board as one of the Members suggested. There would be a smaller bureaucracy.
For example, what we suggested is, one deputy minister instead of three and you can subtract from there the fewer staff that would be required. It is true that the reductions probably would be in Yellowknife and some of the regional centres, but not in the communities. One last thing I would say is to the question about not enough time. It is probably the opinion of Members that there is not enough time, but in fact it is us and the bureaucracy saying we can do it. We can reorganize and we can make the government more efficient in this time. We can show you that it is possible. That would be my comments.