Yes, Mr. Chairman, I am prepared to answer the question. My witnesses are here somewhere. They are coming. Mr. Chairman, the question, as I recall, was what were we doing to attract employees working at the mine to live in the North. I suppose in the same way to have Northerners take on more jobs.
Mr. Chairman, there are a number of things we are doing. I think the last government started doing a lot, where we had the $10,000 grant for housing to encourage people to move North. I think that had some success.
We have been fairly active as a government and municipal governments in marketing the Northwest Territories as a good place to live and be. I saw advertising at the Meet the North Conference last year. I see advertising at Ekati Mine and other places to say this is a good place.
The City of Yellowknife and I believe other communities have either subsidized or helped people to come up and do familiarization of the North, bring their families up so they can understand it. The companies themselves have done a fair bit of providing northern allowances to people who are not travelling. I believe they have also encouraged families to come up. They have moved their northern management here. They are doing some and we encourage them to continue with that.
We have signed socio-economic agreements with both BHP and Diavik, that require them to meet some targets in terms of the percentage of northern workers. There are a fair number of initiatives we have undertaken to encourage and have people move to and live in the North. Thank you.