Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I too would like to speak about the meeting the Yellowknife Members held with our constituents last night. Previous speakers have addressed a range of issues. One issue I would like to concentrate on has to do with the Giant employees.

We heard many presentations about the Giant Mine pensioners, and particularly from Mary Kosta. The impact not only on these pensioners, but also on the widows and the widows-to-be is something I think we have to encourage the federal government to deal with very quickly. After all, they will soon suffer a drop of about 25 percent in their pensions as a result of the company having under-funded the pension plan.

Mr. Speaker, I think the way these employees were treated by their former employer is disgraceful. There is no severance pay. I think the federal government should be ashamed that their legislation allowed this to happen.

We have talked in this House a number of times about devolution. Mr. Speaker, I think it is time to talk about devolution for labour legislation as well. I think it is time that we took over labour legislation in the Northwest Territories.

This is not just because of this issue, but unfortunately relates back to the Giant Mine strike. I know I was tremendously frustrated in the days of that strike by the failure of the federal government to act. Northerners should be able to decide whether to prohibit replacement workers in our own legislation. We should not be stuck waiting for a federal Minister thousands of miles away to decide that it is indeed a crisis.

Northerners should have our own developed and designed in the North legislation protecting workers. Mr. Speaker, I would like to call on the government to move quickly to bring forward a legislative proposal on labour legislation. This should then go out for public discussion. Then I believe we should move to occupy the field of labour legislation. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.