Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will be as brief as I can. I want to centralize my discussions on a small component of the Minister's statement in the career development and maximizing northern employment. I will readdress this in the response he provided me in the Oral Question 10-15(2) in part by employment opportunities. In paragraph three, he said in September of 2003 the Government of the Northwest Territories organized labour groups to begin discussions about the construction of the proposed Mackenzie Valley pipeline. It speaks a bit about a meeting with the northern pipeline projects, Alberta Building Trades Council and the Christian Labour Association of Canada. In follow-up to that, I had received another letter from the NWT Federation of Labour, which replied to my question to the Minister, and it makes reference to the fact that given the past experience of the Northwest Territories' pipeline construction and it points out the Canol project Painted Mountain in Norman Wells, and it seems to me that they understand some of their misgivings. Although we support the development of future pipeline development, we also want to talk in the context of the pipeline construction and the role that the unions play. We talked about the United Association is a craft union representing welders, plumbers, pipefitters, the International Union of Operating Engineers, representing equipment operators, labourers, the International Union of North America represents skilled pipeline labourers, the Teamsters represents equipment haulers, and a number of others. I am curious to know, in terms of investment in maximizing northern employment, that the Minister has taken a more concerted effort to identify -- and again I am going to phrase it in the context of my earliest question -- how we have influence over the union politics. It concerns me, Mr. Chairman, that our past experience doesn't give us too much clout in the context of the overall picture.
I think I raised the point yesterday to the Minister of RWED that we really have to move away from socioeconomic agreements, going to more covenant agreements that would give legal binding to any kind of agreement. So I am going to ask the Minister if he has worked with those specific unions identified and tried to advance training opportunities in the context of maximizing northern employment. That would be my first question to the Minister. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.