Thank you, Mr. Chair. No, that’s not what we’re saying. Safety is still an important part of our work. We are not going to abandon all of the safety programs or anything we have in place for safety. That’s not what we’re saying. What we are saying is, if we develop hard rules saying that individual contractors have to have certain types of specific safety certifications in order to be on our jobsites today, then we will have eliminated the majority of people that are doing contracting in the Northwest Territories today.

So what we are doing is we are working with industry to roll out this process and determine what is acceptable for the government and what’s acceptable for industry and the contractors, and we are going to come up with something that will prevent the issues that we have encountered in the past.

The Member is correct; we had received a couple of hefty fines on safety issues and we’re not interested in continuing to pay those types of hefty fines as well. We’re not gambling with taxpayer dollars, but taxpayers are the ones who would be adversely affected if today we were to make this rule and we eliminated half of the industry in the Northwest Territories from working in the Northwest Territories and from working for the government. That wouldn’t be wise either.

What we are trying to do is we are moving forward in a safe manner and trying to get certification off of everyone, safety certification of everyone that is going to work for us. I am just saying we can’t make that decision today. We will move into that decision once we are comfortable that the majority of the contractors…and a large majority of the contractors that have consistently done work for the GNWT are certified. Thank you.