Mr. Chairman, obviously it would be our preference to use as much local labour as possible. Some contracts have been negotiated in the past. In some cases it may have been a project management issue where the project wasn’t done on a timely manner. Unfortunately, that hurts the local development corporation that they may have partnered up with. We continue to look on a case-by-case basis. They come forward, the good case where they may have different project management teams in place, then we would obviously have a look at it.

For those that want training, like the young person that you are speaking of, if they prove that they are quite capable workers, then it would be to the benefit of the general contractor who wins the contract to use local sub-trades where we can, and

that would cut his costs down and would give people in the community an opportunity to work.

I say again, and I have said this publicly a few times, I am really encouraged by the capacity of a lot of our small town contractors to start bidding on some of the work. In one particular case, a gentleman asked for a negotiated contract, but they had the capacity to compete in an open market. For that reason we turned it down. The contract came out. This particular person won it and he won it for more than it would have been negotiated, so he obviously benefited from it.

We will still continue to try working as best we can with communities to try to utilize as much local as possible. There are some contractors from some of the larger centres that win some of these contracts, but the local contractors would have a preference to 5 percent or something like that. There is some built in, we call them, incentives but there are some built-in margins for local contractors that are bidding on work in the community. Thank you.