Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Following with interest the discussion of preparing a workforce and skills for the anticipated activity in the oil and gas field, it was also something that came up during some business meetings some Members had with various companies, national companies that will more than likely be involved in the construction of a northern pipeline, specifically the meeting we had with the Trans Canada pipeline people. One of the issues we discussed was workforce mobility, if you will. Major construction projects of this nature tend to be very concentrated and very rapid in the way they are constructed and built.
That means enormous numbers of workers are brought into a place for a short period of time in order to get the job done, then they are gone.
We experienced some of this during the building of the Norman Wells pipeline early in the 1980s, where there was a surge in workers brought in. Some information I had really illustrated how ill-prepared, not only in terms of our workforce skills, but in our ability to absorb the magnitude of what was coming down.
A potential pipeline down the Mackenzie Valley will be a project many times the size of that. One of the things the Trans-Canada people impressed on was the enrolment of these multi-national contracting companies, major union organizations, and the issue of workforce mobility across provincial and international borders.
The question I would like to ask the Minister is, in looking at this potential development in years to come, because we can anticipate there will be spur lines, there will be associated activity, has the department been as proactive as to start up some discussions with these potential contractors involved, the unions involved, with either provincial and perhaps national officials to find out how we can be better prepared for what will be, we hear from the Trans-Canada people, a pretty complicated network of labour migration? Thank you, Mr. Chairman.