Floyd Roland

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, what we do in a number of cases or in the past, again, we haven’t got into privatization initiatives for a number of years now, but what was done in the past when a community or business would request that this be done and there was support for it, an agreement would be put in place. There would be a timeline established as well for the final transactions to happen and the company would take over full operations. I believe in the case of Tuktoyaktuk it was a five-year agreement that was in place, but after year four there was an agreement to proceed with...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I don’t have the information available to me. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Under the land claim agreements, there is a requirement that we, as a government, would undertake certain activities. They would be listed out in the agreements and in this case, with both the Sahtu and the Gwich’in, the money would flow from DIAND for us to perform work for the organization. So that’s how that one works. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, we are hoping that we can bring something to Members by early fall, so that they could review the work that has been done. As I stated, in the past, there have been a number of reviews done on the affirmative action policy, so our intention is to work with what we have initially, put something together, bring it forward to Members for their input and then move forward on that basis. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. What page would that be on? What section of Public Works and Services? I can try to provide that detail to the Member.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, with the work we’re undertaking now around human resource service centres and the work tied to that around preparing ourselves for bringing forward a paper for two Members, we feel that through that avenue, we could address how we would engage further activities or would we still feel that this is a satisfactory avenue to use. We would be addressing that through that process. Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, the fine-tuning is not all that fine when it does come down to the prices and the adjustments we would have to look at. We are hopeful, although we say closing balance for 2004-05 revised estimates, we are hoping with the last contracts and delivery of product, we might see that improve a little bit once the final accounting is done. If it continues to slide, then what I would be looking at doing is bringing a submission forward to my FMB colleagues for an adjustment to ensure we don’t start dipping below the line on a continuous basis. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the affirmative action policy has been looked at by our government. Mr. Braden has brought his concerns forward and we have looked at them from within FMBS and reviewed that, and we are committed to going forward and hopefully bringing an equal employment equity paper to this Assembly that would see some changes with the way we deal with affirmative action categories. There are some problems with what we have in place now. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, at one point the government-wide decision was to allow for privatization of facilities, specifically petroleum product facilities we had in communities. That happened in a number of communities. It was felt though as the larger communities were pulled off line that it was getting to the point where it would be uneconomical for both a business to try to operate in some of these communities as well as it became more cost prohibitive on our shop to look at further privatization initiatives, because the economies of scale would lose ground with each one. It...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, when an employee is hired on a term position, again, their employment contract would state for how long that position is available. If it’s a two-year position or so on they would be available, that’s the timeline of that. The staff retention portion -- and I would have to double check this -- I don’t believe would apply because the job is slated to come to completion in that time frame. But I’d have to get the background on that. I’m not fully up to speed on that section. Thank you.