Mahsi. Good morning, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, there have been a couple of media accounts in the last couple of days about ongoing discussions and negotiations for devolution and moving northern programs now vested in Ottawa actually into the North. What a radical concept, Mr. Speaker. But it seems that, as in past attempts to transfer these programs, we are again running into the issue of the transfer of employees now based in southern Canada into the North and coming into the family here with the GNWT's workforce.

Mr. Speaker, that stalemate is quite understandable. These are people who have lives, and careers, and families, and investments, and homes in other parts of Canada and it is not something to be taken for granted, or taken lightly, that they would simply pick up and move. But it's been characterized that we have this I think 20 percent differential in our pay packet that we have to resolve.

Mr. Speaker, we're talking about a landmark evolution in the future of the Northwest Territories and yet, as we have experienced and seen in the past, we are hung up at least in part on the situation involving, we understand, about 170 federal employees. I want to sympathize with their concerns, but I also think, Mr. Speaker, that this is about more than money. It's about the challenge, perhaps, and the fear of moving to a new part of Canada.

When my family moved here from Saskatchewan in 1964, I know that our relatives and neighbours in the small town that we came from figured that we were going to fall off the edge of the earth. Well, we're still here. I also remember, Mr. Speaker, in 1967 being at the airport here in Yellowknife and watching a chartered plane from Ottawa filled with federal southern bureaucrats who were ready to take on the job of helping to build the North. That, I think, is where we should go today.

Mr. Speaker, I'd like to issue a personal invitation to the people who are considering or having this option to move North to think about...