Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My colleagues have mentioned many areas that deserve highlight. I will mention a couple of them just to underscore their significance with me and my constituents. I have quite a number of GNWT employees in my riding and the management of the civil service has been a fairly common topic when I go door to door, when I meet them for luncheon meetings here, telephone calls. There's a couple areas of expectation in this newly restructured HR shop. As a couple of people have already mentioned, affirmative action. This has been fairly high on my agenda, my constituency agenda, and it's knowing that there are a number of major things that needed to happen first as there's an expectation that this one will stay on the order page and will receive due attention in the course of time.

The transition, I think every one of us has received information of some kind or another about some of the difficulties we have been having and it has not been unexpected. There is obviously room for improvement and I know the folks are on the game and doing their best to bring it in line. We are, as recently as just a couple of weeks ago, though, still missing some significant deadlines in terms of issuing final pay and records of employment; very basic things that an employee should be able to expect of any employer and we have, at least in a couple of instances that I've heard of, fallen down. Please, let's pick up our boots on that area.

Mr. Chairman, there is, I guess, one overriding concern and it's probably a more proper discussion around business planning or some blue sky stuff with the Minister, with other Ministers. That is the very dynamic, very rapid pace in which our whole workforce, work environment, is changing. It's a burning hot economy up here. The competition for skills is enormous. There are demographic shifts happening with aging workforce, with levels of education, with immigration. Many, many things to keep on top of and for the Government of the Northwest Territories to continue delivering the services that we already have a mandate to do, and then factor in the kind of things that we want to do in the future specific to resource development and allocation, a whole other set of skills that need to be developed, grown, nurtured, educated as much as possible, of course, here in the North, but also to know that a turnover and bringing in new ideas and new perspectives and new blood is also healthy for an organization. How are we going to make ourselves a good employer as well as try and fit in some of these very daunting problems that employers have with cost-of-living housing? Especially those areas; and we're going to need to be innovative. I'm ready to be a part of that process, but that, I say, is one that's probably out there for another day to get into more detail, but it is very much a factor in our operating environment and I wanted to put that on the record. That's all, Mr. Chairman. Let's do some detail.