Thank you, Madam Chair. Maybe I will start by explaining the rationale and why we've decided to go in house and try to get those three staff positions that we are asking for. Years ago, the department had more assessors, in '96. They went from five assessors to only two. At that time, the committee of the day suggested that we move people to regional centres. They tried recruiting assessors to be moved to the regional centres. That was during the decentralization period when we had five assessors at headquarters, but once we moved those positions to the regional centres, none of those assessors moved with their positions to the regional centres. So we did have a problem there. After that, the department decided to recruit from the private sector. This is a skilled position. You have to have people who are very skilled to do this type of work. We are even having a difficult time recruiting them from the private sector. So we've decided now that we are going to try to recruit for headquarters. We are confident that we are going to be successful in adding these positions here in headquarters.
I know some members raised the concern about Yellowknife, but I can tell the committee in the earlier days it was decided to move them to the regional centres. If I had my way, I would move them, but because these are very skilled positions, we felt at this time that we would like to start off with headquarters first and maybe down the road, we could move them into the regional centres. If we are successful in getting these positions, we are going to hire a qualified senior property assessor and we are going to get a northern trainee who meets the entrance requirements for property assessment certification and assessment technicians. Those are the positions we are going to be looking at.
We are going to enter into long-term committed contract arrangements for northern firms for providing incentives for training and certification for northern residents as property assessors and we are also going to expand contracting activities, establish property assessment funding directly to tax-based communities, effectively decentralizing the function to those communities. We have similar arrangements with the City of Yellowknife. We are also going to ensure all industrial properties are assessed and paying tax revenues to our government. We are also going to ensure compliance with the legislative requirements of the Property Assessment Taxation Act.
So those are the three positions we are going to be looking at. We are quite confident we can attract these three positions, if they are situated in headquarters for the department. Thank you.