I can’t speak for what the previous government had decided on. I know the discussions at times were a negotiation back and forth, and the agreements had to be concluded. From our point, as I requested to sit before committee and deal with the issue of Deh Cho Bridge, requests were made. I made commitments, and I followed up on them.

My question today is for the Minister of Industry, Tourism and Investment. It gets back again to my statement from earlier today, where I talked again about the migrant worker issue here in the Northwest Territories, with the 3,300 migrant workers and the $350 million every year that leaves the Territory.

In my statement I talked about De Beers Canada. I don’t by any means intend to single out De Beers, but it’s a real-life example. They currently have Edmonton as a point of pickup for employees working at their Snap Lake and Gahcho Kué

operations. They not only fly them in from Edmonton, but as of January 1, 2008, they’re supplying workers travelling a greater distance than 500 kilometres away from Edmonton $600 a month to get to Edmonton.

This just doesn’t seem right to me, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to ask the Minister if this is in keeping with the spirit and intent of the socio-economic agreement which they signed?

As the Member knows, we have a socio-economic agreement that we negotiated with De Beers. As part of the agreement, there’s an implementation provision that allows, for a certain period of time, for De Beers to provide these employees. Over the longer term, it is our expectation that De Beers and the diamond company as well will hire Northern workers to work in the mines in accordance with the socio-economic agreements that have been negotiated.

I should also point out that in each of the cases, the other diamond companies are also providing — I guess the Member called them migrant workers — out-of-Territory workers from the south and have advised us of that fact. It is our intent to, and we have already, communicate our concern with that.

We will be working with the mining companies to find a way to improve this situation to the benefit of the Northwest Territories.

Mr. Speaker, I’m glad to hear that the Minister is going to be communicating with the mining companies to try to combat this situation that’s playing itself out right now.

Meanwhile, residents in our smaller communities and, as I mentioned, pockets of high unemployment in smaller communities are going without work. I think every opportunity should be afforded to residents here in the Northwest Territories first.

I’d like to ask the Minister: what assistance has this government given to communities like Hay River, Fort Smith, Yellowknife and Inuvik to market themselves to these mining companies and to the migrant workers that are frequenting our Territory?

We are trying to work closely with those communities the Member referred to. As some of you may recall, in an effort to increase the attractiveness of communities like Yellowknife, Hay River, Fort Smith, in the past we have made the Down Payment Assistance Program available, whereby we assisted first-time home buyers to buy houses. That was with the intention of attracting mine workers.

We’ve also been involved with marketing programs. I think we’ve helped the communities put information advertising their communities at the various mine sites.

Mr. Speaker, again I thank the Minister for that. But some of that work was done over ten years ago.

I think what we need is an updated, coordinated approach by the government to the communities that I mentioned earlier, so that they could have a coordinated approach, a package to work with industry, to work with the migrant workers to attract them here to live in the Northwest Territories.

I’d like to ask the Minister if he could commit today to looking at ways and means to work with the community to get this type of package, as I mentioned, and type of marketing campaign off the ground so that we can attract some workers here.

We certainly can commit to do that. Also, I’d like to point out that we’re working very closely with the diamond companies. We think this is a problem for all of us to work together on to try to resolve this situation.

We met with diamond companies in early December. We will continue to work with them. We can also work with the communities to make them more attractive for workers who live in the south to relocate to the Northwest Territories.

Final supplementary, Mr. Ramsay.

Mr. Speaker, yesterday we talked a little bit, too, about setting up community registries

where we could identify communities and the individuals in those communities who are looking for opportunities for employment.

I’d like to ask the Minister today to commit to having a look at setting up a registry system in our communities so that we don’t miss a single person who wants to work in the resource sector in our Territory, Mr. Speaker.

I understood that we had a registry at one time. I’d have to go back and check to see whether it’s still in existence. I’ll be working very closely with my colleague the Minister of Education on this.

Mr. Speaker, my question is on the Deh Cho Bridge, for the Premier.

I’m wondering, in the list of liabilities that we want to protect ourselves from — hopefully, we’ve had some work done on ensuring that — has there been an assessment of the workforce that would be required for the bridge and some assurance that the workforce would come from the North?

I’m concerned at this time with the shortage of labour. Would we be pulling our workers from the mines to work on the bridge? What would that do to the mines and so on? What sort of assessment and assurances have been made that the workforce is here and will benefit our Northern workers?

Maybe I haven’t kept the Transportation portfolio, but specifically on that request, my information is that the Deh Cho Bridge Corporation has done that work in an evaluation of the type of skill sets they will need and are looking at what the people will need to help build this bridge.

Yeah, I understand that Transportation would have done some work there. I’m looking for some assurance that the benefits will accrue to us. I think that issue of migrant workers has been raised. We already know that we are shipping out $350 million a year because of that. We know that there’s a shortage of workers. I’m looking for some assurance that we’re not just, again, piling on these projects that benefit the rest of Canada while robbing resources from the North.

So what are we doing to ensure that we’re not exacerbating the migrant workforce problem? What assurances have we got?

Mr. Speaker, again, my understanding is that the Deh Cho Bridge Corporation has done work on the area of the amount of people they would need. From what I

understand, approximately 100 people would be required at any given time.

They’ve looked at that skill set and where they could draw on that. As well, they’ve surveyed the communities in the region to look at the contractors that would be available to take up the work that will be required. So in the southern part of the Territory, Yellowknife as well, the contractors would be made to look at what is available for that construction period.

Yeah, I appreciate that. I guess the concern is liabilities, in particular, if the bridge is delayed. I think if you talk to many businesses in the North, their businesses have experienced a lot of delays. We are experiencing a lot of delays in our capital projects and infrastructure and so on. My constituents are raising their concern. They are seeing a bridge that is half-completed and sits there and takes twice as a long to build and so on.

Mr. Speaker, do we have liabilities, or do our costs increase if the period of construction extends significantly beyond the three years currently planned?

Mr. Speaker, as laid out in an earlier question, there is a number of factors that come into play when we look at trying to limit the liabilities that we could be party to. Some of the shared risk here is between the Deh Cho Bridge Corporation, the construction company as well as the Government of the Northwest Territories because we’re seen as the backstop to this project, as Members have correctly pointed out.

So those liabilities, again, include, for example, an independent engineer to audit the construction parameters of this as well as some of the eligible costs that may be covered, or ineligible, that would put some of the risk back on the construction company as well as the Deh Cho Bridge Corporation to limit the risk of the G.N.W.T.

Final supplementary, Mr. Bromley.

Thank you for that response. I am concerned and will be interested in getting some more details on that.

I think I heard the Premier indicate earlier to Mrs. Groenewegen that he will be looking into what the costs would be for the G.N.W.T. to get out of this project or terminate the work. I’ll be interested in that. Is there a date when we can expect the estimate on that cost?

Mr. Speaker, one thing we have to realize is, as I discussed with Members, as the lawyers are doing their work, there is a time frame that they have to meet as well. That is coming up before the end of this month.

We can pull the work together as quick as we can and try to get a quick view of it from FMBS on what the potentials are there and try to come back within a couple of days to see what we’re able to provide.

Mr. Speaker, I’m very pleased to hear the Minister of Human Resources indicate in his statement that his department is currently determining areas of its mandate that “need additional work.” I look forward to those survey results in June.

As I mentioned in my statement, I feel that there’s a group of residents in the Territory that are currently disadvantaged in terms of employment. Where other jurisdictions can have far more persons with disabilities employed than can the G.N.W.T., can the Minister advise why we have so few people employed and why we have such a poor record of employing persons with disabilities?

Mr. Speaker, I guess there’s a number of reasons for that. I certainly concur with the Member that we need to do a better job to improve our employment of persons with disabilities. I guess the large part of the problem — and she’s already alluded to it — is self-identification. I do know that we have employees who are not self-identified, but that doesn’t make the situation any better, as the Member says.

I think that what we need to do is to work very closely with the groups that work with persons with disabilities and work with individuals to improve the situation. I think the Affirmative Action Policy that we have doesn’t lend itself to improving the representation of persons with disabilities in the workforce.

Mr. Speaker, I’m glad to hear that the Minister is open to working with the Council of Persons with Disabilities. I’d be most pleased to help him facilitate that.

I mentioned in my statement that I believe that persons with disabilities priority ought to be changed. I would like to know whether or not the Minister would consider that for revision, changing the priority for persons with disabilities from P2 to P1?

Mr. Speaker, I guess I would like to point out to the Members that we have been a bit proactive in this area. We have identified a special liaison person to deal with persons with disabilities.

I would have to look at the Affirmative Action Policy. I don’t know whether that’s the best way to improve the representation of persons with disabilities in the

government workforce. We’re still working on our strategic plan.

In the past, governments have been presented with a draft employment equity strategy, which I think is more suited to dealing with these types of situations. As we go forward, I think I would like to present that again to see if we could get the support of the Members to go forward with it — I guess, specifically, to deal with persons with disabilities.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the Minister’s reluctance to state an answer right here. But I would urge that we move forward on changing the priority.

For me, it’s a no-cost item. We’re simply encouraging. We are giving people employment who deserve it, and we’re not actually spending any extra money.

One of the things I discovered in looking at this issue is there’s an interesting item on the Human Resources department’s online manual, which shows that, for management positions, persons with disabilities are not listed as P2; they’re listed as P3. They come after indigenous aboriginals and women.

I wonder if the Minister can explain to me why we have a discrepancy between the priority for non-management positions and management positions for persons with disabilities.