Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just a couple of comments. First of all I’d like to congratulate the department on its recognition of its efforts to maintain our labour force within government. That being said, I was somewhat reserved in terms of this initiative to go to Ottawa and seek people from outside the NWT to move into the North and basically join the workforce.

I acknowledge that it’s a challenge of hiring Northerners and First Nations people in the NWT. The act itself of going to Ottawa and recruiting people from outside of the NWT presumes that it’s a matter of fact that we have a challenge of ensuring that we have a very diverse labour pool and that we’re trying to seek Northerners and also First Nations people to join the workforce. It’s pretty clear that it’s a challenge in terms of being employable, looking for jobs or business opportunities in communities, and it’s hard to accept that this idea of going out of the NWT and trying to get people other jobs when in fact here in the NWT there’s still a high rate of unemployment in the communities. So that was hard to take. I understand perhaps it was necessary for the department to go to Ottawa.

The other point I wanted to make is in terms of vacant positions. Obviously, in the small communities, because there’s a somewhat limited labour pool, people are put on casual and it’s probable for people to work on a casual basis for the rest of their lives, but it creates uncertainty for families and for people that are trying to make a living when they’re given a casual position perhaps on a seasonable basis and they have to basically work from month to month or else even year to year. In that respect, I think there’s likely ways that the department is trying to remedy that challenge of ensuring that we address that dilemma in the communities.

I wanted to ask, in terms of the Affirmative Action Policy, whether indeed such a policy still exists within government, and whether indeed we’re employing it and invoking it to ensure that there’s a level of parity for people that have grown up here in the NWT, have been encouraged by their parents and by their leaders to go to school. We send our kids down south, perhaps to other institutions, to go as high as they can and they come back up here and they’ve gone as far as they could in terms of getting an education, perhaps lacking experience to apply for a job, and then they’re told that they don’t have the qualifications or the experience. That’s hard to accept, but at the same time, I do realize that it is a challenge that we’re trying to meet and that we could perhaps do more.

One thing that I also became aware of is that there is an element of an Aboriginal component to this that we’re trying to bring people that have a very solid track record, in terms of their careers, and serve as, perhaps, role models, and that we’re trying to gain from their experiences and expertise in trying to remedy some of the labour force challenges, especially for the labour pool that exists for the NWT and also particularly for First Nations people.

Those are just some of my comments that I had. Perhaps if the Minister responds, likely I will have some supplementary. Thank you.