I appreciate the Minister’s comments on that. I too would be interested in the research on that. I would just note that the average wage of employees in the Northwest Territories is 50 per cent above the Canadian average, and I suspect that if you just took the GNWT employees, it would be even greater than that. Our cost of living, especially in our larger centres, is more like 20 per cent higher. So I think there would be some room for some exploration there.

Mr. Chairman, the other question or frustration I have is that I feel I’m sort of finessed into dealing with this situation of vacant positions when, really, what we had been expecting was that layoffs would have been based on program review. I’m sure it doesn’t help labour relations and recruitment to base things on this rather than showing we’re looking to improve effectiveness, efficiency and so on. Again, that’s just a comment. I’m hoping to see the program review finally implemented as fast as possible and, also, layoffs not resulting from the random selection of vacant positions but actually being based on program review and increased efficiency.