Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I have a lot of concerns with regard to this bill. We just passed an NWT Human Rights Act which talks about ensuring that we have equal pay for equal work and also to avoid discrimination based on race. My concern is more in line with the whole idea that we have a public service that provides services to the NWT, but we also have people within the public service who are not part of the union system or who are not totally under the department's authority. We have people there that carry out responsibilities of this government being discriminated against today despite the equal pay aspect of our human rights legislation.

They are being paid less for providing a public service in small communities than they are in large municipalities or larger centres. I feel that that is discrimination. If we think that we are going to pass an act strictly to deal with one class of employees and not deal with all our employees, for me, that's discrimination. I feel that the government is trying to find a way to get away from the Canadian Human Rights Act by ignoring the whole reason that we are here, dealing with pay equity. Now we are dealing with another inequity, the rights of people who provide public service in our small communities. Currently, these people provide a public service but are being paid less than people in the public service that provide a similar service. For me, that's totally uncalled for. What was the intent of passing human rights legislation in this legislature if the government comes back with this legislation discriminating against employees who provide public services in small communities? I cannot see the justification of that. We have an opportunity here to amend this legislation to allow for a definition of who an employee of the public service is. We need to allow for those employees who provide our income support services in our communities, our mental health services, our economic development officers.

These are all public services provided to the residents of the Northwest Territories. Yet, Mr. Chairman, what really gets me is that the seriousness of this issue doesn't even seem to faze this government. We are providing a government service in a lot of our communities through a government policy or procedure called offloading. We are offloading our responsibilities and offloading the money that is going to be needed to carry out these programs. We are paying people less to provide the same service as if they were government employees or they were in a larger centre.

For me, that's what human rights is all about, to ensure equity is there. You provide a service, you should be paid for that service. I feel that the government is offloading these responsibilities to communities by providing them with the resources to deliver programs and services at a lower cost than government has to pay in other communities and other regions.

As a result, people who live in small communities are receiving a lower level of service than most people in the larger centres. There, again, is an inequity on programs and services being delivered.

What we have is people in our communities who are classified as less valuable than people who are providing the same service in a different location. When you pay someone a lesser amount than someone who has the same qualifications, same classifications and provides the same program under this government's guidelines to deliver that program, for me it is a question of equity. Inequity is what put us here in the first place. The challenges that were put forth in a court case on pay equity under the Canadian Human Rights Act is why we are here today talking about this. It took a court case for us to deal with it. Now we are bringing this thing before this House and not resolving that problem. We are simply saying we will take care of this class of people, but we are not going to take care of that class of people. For me, this unjustly undermines the whole principle of human rights legislation.

In order to resolve this problem, I would like to ask the Minister if he is prepared to consider amendments to the definition of employees in the public service under schedule A of the Public Service Act, so that we can deal with this unfairness and inequity, so that it will include all those people that provide a public service for this government regardless of whether they are employed through a separate contract or employed indirectly for that purpose. For me that is where we can resolve this inequity.

We have the problems right now with the Minister of Health and Social Services who is trying to bring our alcohol and drug workers and mental health workers in line with other professions within the healthcare system. What does it take for us to realize we have people on the front lines, such as our mental health workers or alcohol drug workers or even our income support workers, who are providing a public service and being paid less than the government employees in social services or education or wherever?

So I would like to ask the Minister, will you consider looking at the definition and see if there is a possibility of bringing in some sort of an amendment to allow for employees in our communities providing services through those contractual arrangements to know that the resources to cover their salaries and their benefits will be properly allocated to our communities so they can be paid fairly? They are providing a public service which is no less valuable than in other communities. So for me it is a question of human rights that we have agreed to through our human rights legislation, but also ensuring that this government is fair to all people that provide a public service in this government.

I would like to ask the Minister if he will consider the possibility of defining the language that is presently in this legislation to allow for those people who provide services on behalf of this government, whether they are employed through a separate contract or employed indirectly.