Mr. Chair, my question is in regard to human resources strategy but also on the policy side. This department is now responsible for ensuring that the policies that we do have are implemented but, more importantly, dealing with the Affirmative Action Policy. With these cuts that are taking place, a large number of aboriginal people are being let go, yet as a government we’re somewhere just under 40 per cent of aboriginal employment in this government. I think we have a policy that clearly states that we’re supposed to do what we can to ensure we have a reflective workforce and, more importantly, to try to get more people into the workforce, especially aboriginal people.

In regard to the cuts, two areas where we’ve seen the biggest impact on aboriginal employment are Transportation and Justice. I’d just like to ask the Minister: exactly what does his department do to ensure that we minimize the number of aboriginal employees that are going to be cut so that we don’t decline our numbers into a worse-case scenario than what we are right now? We’re not even coming close to meeting our goals of trying to have a representative workforce and having more aboriginal people in the public service. I’d just like

to know: was that policy followed when these cuts took place by way of job cuts?