Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There really are two issues, or three. One is the collective agreement, one is the settlement agreement with respect to pay equity and the other issue which was raised by a number of Members was, what are you doing about the non-unionized employees on the pay equity side?
On the non-unionized employees, Cabinet colleagues support me, and we are going to provide them with the same benefits as the other members with respect to pay equity, that is going to get done and is being done as we speak. On the collective agreement, they are out right now asking the membership to vote on it, and I hope, and I am confident that our employees will sign off that collective agreement, because it puts significant new dollars in their hands. In particular, there are some areas where we have had some problems, community nurses, et cetera, along with, of course, everybody else.
On the pay equity sensitive issue, as most of you know now, we did send out and were given legal advice on our right to send out a letter to individual employees, indicating to them what the pay equity would be in accordance with our calculations and our belief that the Hay Plan Evaluation System was a fair gender neutral one. We have had considerable success in the returns to date. We have somewhere in the region of about 64 percent of people have signed off on the pay equity and have returned it, and we are trying to issue the cheques as quickly as we can.
We have extended the deadline, if you want, for returning the pay equity agreements until the end of March, and I am optimistic that we will get somewhere between 70 percent or more of our employees signing off on the pay equity issue. Hopefully, at the end of the day, by doing this, we will have concluded a very tough and difficult issue for a number of our employees and to some extent, reduced the long-term liability that two new governments may have if there are any future liability issues that unfold in the coming years, because it will literally take years for us to try and resolve this issue with the Tribunal with the Commission.