Mr. Speaker, I appreciate what an exciting day this is for the member for Yukon. That is tremendous.
He mentioned that the powers for the commissioner would expire in 10 years. That is nice, but 10 years is a long way down the road. We will just assume that good things are going to happen in those 10 years.
I noticed the member did not say anything about my little rant about PSAC and the federal civil servants who are going to be transferred to the Yukon government as employees. We wish that everything will go really smoothly in that. They are people who are making their livelihood at it. They are excellent people who work in the federal civil service and now will be transferred. I know there will be some nervousness.
All the buzzwords of restructuring, downsizing and redundancy sound so slick on paper, but what about the first person who gets the axe? It will probably happen. The economy will change. The member just mentioned that softwood lumber is in a mess. Who knows. When we guarantee things like that, things happen. We know that, especially because of September 11; who would have thought that would have happened?
These things happen and they will, sure as guns. It will not be the World Trade Center obviously but something will happen in Yukon. Then someone somewhere at a desk will say, “We just cannot manage with all these people”. What is going to happen then with union negotiations? For the sake of those people who are going to be transferred over, if I had worked for the federal government for the last twenty-three and a half years and then all of a sudden I was being moved to a new employer-employee situation, I would want to have some surety that I was going to be protected. No one can guarantee anyone a job for life, that is for sure, but we hope those things will be taken into account.