Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just have a couple of brief comments. At the outset I want to commend the Member for Great Slave, Mr. Abernethy, for bringing forward these amendments to the Employment Standards Act. It’s a relatively simple change. We are adding another type of leave to the Employment Standards Act. I think with the addition of the hardship clause, which amendments were made at committee and which were concurred to by the sponsor, this is an excellent piece of legislation. The amendments are going to serve our reservists in the NWT very well.

We are the only jurisdiction other than Nunavut who does not currently have reservists leave in our legislation and we have now corrected that for us. Hopefully Nunavut will fall closely behind.

I just would like to say that this is a great move on the part of Mr. Abernethy and I fully support this private member’s public bill.