Mr. Speaker, there are some $300 million in wages leaving the Northwest Territories every year and going south in Canada. Yet for residents of the Northwest Territories to get a job, now they have to go to Alberta to find work because the companies in the Northwest Territories are not hiring Northwest Territories residents. I think that as a government we have a responsibility to ensure we take care of the interests of residents of the Northwest Territories first.
I’d like to ask the Minister again: would he make sure the N.W.T. Mining Association along with Diavik, BHP, and other companies make their best efforts to look outside the North Slave of the N.W.T.
and go to the Mackenzie Delta, to the Mackenzie Valley, and other places in the Northwest Territories to start recruiting other people from the Northwest Territories?