Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to all of the witnesses for coming here today.
I do think it's important to note that the way these hearings have been conducted at the committee, there weren't any arrangements made to invite to the committee aboriginal workers who are members of the union at the Ekati Diamond Mine who actually supported the strike.
So, Mr. Zoe, while I certainly respect your viewpoint and the role you play there—I think it's an important role—we're hearing your viewpoint, but we're actually not hearing from members of the union who are aboriginal who did support the strike. I think we should note that.
Secondly, Mr. Nicholls, I'm interested in some of the comments you made. In your brief you said that Ekati, or BHP, did not use replacement workers. Yet I think it's pretty clear that Ekati directed its contractors to do the struck work. They're actually not BHP employees, so they were replacement workers.
Indeed, one of your updates to your own employees, number 4, makes this quite clear. To quote from it, it says, “Many of you are no doubt curious as to how we intend to keep operating in a strike situation.” Then you go on to give the answer, “...we intend to operate in the normal fashion, with our own employees and the employees of our alliance partners”. So you talk about “employees of our alliance partners”. Then there's a later reference from your spokesperson to the CBC, making it very clear, “we've got construction workers, our contractors, and our alliance partners”.
So I'm very surprised to hear you say today that you didn't use replacement workers, because I think the information is somewhat different. I'd like you to respond to that.
I'm curious to know whether or not the services of AFI were used. I was reading some information about this organization on my way here. For the benefit of the committee, AFI International Group Inc. “strives to recruit the best personnel for clients requiring replacement workers to continue operations...includes performance monitoring and the administration of payroll and benefits, which removes clients from all direct responsibility for the temporary workforce”. That's from their website.
I'm curious to know whether or not BHP used AFI to do at least monitoring, and using I think tactics that a number of the strikers found quite intimidating, such as videotaping people, following people by vehicle and on foot. So I'm curious to know if BHP does use the services of AFI.
If you could answer those questions, that would be great.