Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I wanted to ask about the recent announcement of Diavik diamond mine with respect to the waiving of the cost or the contribution of the employees towards travel to and from their work, so now employees who reside in southern Canada do not have to pay anything towards that travel. Certainly there was a very extensive socioeconomic agreement put in place at the time that Diavik and BHP were coming online, and our government, I believe, worked very hard to ensure that maximum benefits to northerners through the socioeconomic agreement addressing things like purchasing, contracting and employing northerners and some of the benefits staying here, the secondary diamond processing and the list goes on. So I was quite surprised to hear this announcement by Diavik. I have spoken to it publicly myself and I have certainly had it raised to me as a concern by people who are trying to build their communities with the addition of these workers who are very valued people and make contributions in our community.
Mr. Speaker, the government has been eerily quiet on this subject. I understand that these are businesses operating here in the North. They cite things like labour market competition, needing to be competitive in their remuneration and salary packages as their reasons for waiving this transportation cost, but I think they are doing quite well financially. I am a little bit disappointed with what they are doing. My fear, Mr. Speaker, is once you start flying employees in from the South, then why not just get a bigger airplane and put all the goods on too, and we will be back to the days of Nanisivik and Lupin and we'll
just fly overhead. There goes our diamonds and the people flying over.
So my concern is I haven't heard much response from this government about this, which I think is going to have a major impact. So I would like to know if the Minister has had any communications with Diavik on this. What was the nature of his comments to them? Thank you.