Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Member has given a bit of the history on this and it is correct, the transfer happened in 1995. In 1996, I believe there was a renegotiation of the UNW collective agreement. In this collective agreement, VTAs, vacation travel assistance, were eliminated from the collective agreement. This led to some questions and there was a grievance filed. The chairman of the grievance made his award and it was that he provided for reimbursement for actual past travel expenses.

He went on in that grievance to clarify that the onus of proof continues to rest with the affected employee with respect to expenses incurred. What we have done as a department is we have appealed to the employees that if they have any receipts to substantiate past travel, then we would honour those receipts. Clearly the onus rests with them. We hope that every employee who feels they have not been dealt with fairly is able to give us some evidence that they actually travelled. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.