Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Some diamond mines are not living up to their employment targets as prescribed in their legally contracted socio-economic agreements. The Government of the Northwest Territories and the mines signed these agreements in good faith, where we wanted 60 percent of the mines’ employment to be northern workforce. Right now there are some mines making up less than 40 percent of that workforce.

Industry flies some of these, if not most of these, workers from the South. Minister Ramsay seems to downplay this in a CBC interview a few weeks ago and seems in my view, and in the view of many Northerners, that he’s ignoring the problem. He seems to be quoted as, “that’s just part of the reality we’re living in in Canada.” Then again, the other day in unedited Hansard on February 14th, he says, “I’m not here to defend industry, the mining companies. They signed those agreements in good faith.” So is the Minister defending the mines or is he defending northern jobs?

Increasingly, I know that we live in a time where people can live anywhere, but who’s defending the small communities when unemployment rates reach as high as 70 percent? Are there too many jobs in that community? Do people just not want to work? I say people want to work. Only a handful of people in the Sahtu and, as a matter of fact, four people in the Sahtu work at this mine. Four people in the Inuvik region. Is that too many? Have we oversaturated the employment opportunities? No. People in those regions need job opportunities.

What good is the Mineral Development Strategy if we have no one working at the mines and Northerners aren’t benefiting from these? It was only a few short years ago the same person was complaining in the House about mines subsidizing workers to get to Edmonton to catch the big flight to the northern mines. We need better attitude over here from that side of the House, the Cabinet side, because we should be demanding these mines subsidize the workforce to come south from those hard hit areas that have low unemployment.

We could be going to the Sahtu, we could be going to the Inuvik region, we could even be going to the Nunakput region to put people to work, because people want to work. In some cases there is over 60 percent of our mine force that can only be described as a tourist. That should go on our stats.

So I want the Minister to stop blaming education, stop blaming the mines. What is he going to do to protect our northern legacy? Let’s get our people working. Thank you.