Well, Mr. Chair, the issue is this: a person goes away to work in the mine in the Northwest Territories, and he is there for three weeks. Then he comes home and he is home for one week. When he comes home, he has a pile of mail, plus a whole bunch of family obligations to take care of. The voting issue is not a high priority. In some cases he may have already been away for the date that it had to be voted on by, the expiry date, and so he would have missed the window in which he would have been able to vote.
Plus, one of the issues about voting in a unionized environment is that you should have the right to vote when the issue is alive. Situations change three, four, five, six weeks down the road. Every other province has a very expeditious process. Ontario has seven days, British Columbia has 10 days from the date of application that you should have a vote. That is because things go cold.
I don't think it's in the interest of the union to have this long-delayed time between the actual application and the vote.