Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, I made a fair number of comments the last time we had this in front of the committee on the Job Employment Strategy of this government. Since then, I have also had opportunity to review some information that was provided me by the Minister of Transportation, Mr. Antoine, on the highway construction projects which I believe tie in with the Employment Strategy of this government because they do relate to some programs that this government has which would help create northern employment and training for people.

Now, Madam Chair, I tabled this document yesterday in the House and it is called NWT Residents Employed on 1996 Highway 3 Construction Projects. If the committee would permit me, I would just like to bring some figures out of that document. The documents refer to four separate contracts issued by this government for highway reconstruction. Three of those contracts were awarded to Robinson Trucking and the total value of those contracts was $7.281 million. Now, there was a breakdown in those particular contracts as to how the northerners benefit as far as employment is concerned and I would just like to read you the figures.

In contract number 973001 which was kilometre 112 to 124, Robinson Trucking hired 103 driver operators and, according to the information they supplied, not one of them was an aboriginal. The total number of Northwest Territories resident driver operators were 17; there were 86 from the provinces. When we are dealing with the labour aspect of it, they hired 68 labourers, 38 of them were aboriginals, 25 were non-aboriginals, 61 of them were territorial residents, 7 of those labourers came from the provinces, including Newfoundland.