Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, in putting this motion forward, the committee gave it a considerable amount of consideration and we spent a lot of time on this issue. Again, in considering the growth at headquarters, the committee was not convinced that the department was doing as much as what could be done in land assessing with the resources and staff that they had in house right now.
Also, there was no comfort level that these three positions could even be recruited. The committee was very concerned that the growth at headquarters level, without going through business plan reviews and a good case being put forward as to why these three positions were being needed, we felt that the department should put a better case together and come forward during the next business plan reviews and bring this issue forward again. The committee encouraged the department to do that, and we would be willing to do that again and put those positions in place. I know that we considered this thing for a considerable amount of time. We want the department to have a serious look at this with the possibility of waiting until the next business plan reviews and then we would consider looking at this again.
There's no doubt that there is a backlog in land assessment and that was part of the other thing that the committee looked at, was where the priority areas are and where the department really wants to work with catching
up in the backlog and the new assessments. The committee still wasn't clear that the department really did have any priorities in where they wanted to go with this, so the purpose of the motion is to encourage the department to put this on the backburner for a short period of time until we can come back with business plans and listen to the good case why this should be done. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.