Finance committee  Yes, I certainly can confirm that. My understanding, of course, is that the detriment in terms of applying those funds and making it happen is that there was no completion date for that highway until probably two years ago now, when they finally said that they would invest what

Finance committee  I certainly think it's a great viewpoint. When I mentioned earlier about the vastness of the projects that we've had, the lag time that we had in 2008 actually helped us to catch up a little bit, but we're still behind the eight ball. We have any number of committed capital proje

Finance committee  Very generally I am, and I think this is a significant investment in natural resource development. The fact that I have some 40,000 people who come to our region from all parts of Canada makes me believe that there is some evidence the Government of Canada is not only benefiting

Finance committee  I have a couple of quick perspectives. We have had significant difficulty in having enough land to keep pace with the growth that we've experienced. In recent times, last year basically, we were able to secure more land, so we took that out of the equation. What was happening in

Finance committee  I think market influence would have more effect on that. If we undergo significant layoffs in the community, we will have more people who are forced to put product on to the marketplace. That's when you would see an impact directly correlated. At this point, we're not actually se

Finance committee  Yes, we did. On December 12 we approved our budget for the 2015 year. Though we did know or have an awareness at that time, and we were stringent on projects that we had reviewed, at this point there's much consideration in the community about how we might be able to trim things

Finance committee  Indeed, and I'm not quite certain whether changes will actually be made or will happen within the next few weeks. It's a matter of just making sure that everything we have is still what we want to have.

Finance committee  I would get only random stories. The fact of the matter remains that the temporary foreign worker program has been the most significant benefit to our hospitality and retail and service sector in this community. We simply were not able to bring in enough Canadians to fill the job

Finance committee  Good morning and thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the committee, for this invitation to appear and share a community perspective on this global issue. Certainly it's going to be different from the ones you've heard before. The Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo consists of

Finance committee  Yes I can, thanks.

Natural Resources committee  Not that I'm aware of. We do have independent medical laboratory testing facilities, so if you're going for pre-employment tests, some of these facilities are obviously private.

Natural Resources committee  Yes. These are just businesses. They'll do pre-employment testing for things like hearing, lung functionality, and drugs and alcohol before people get on-site for their jobs.

Natural Resources committee  Again, if it's on the site, I don't necessarily know anything about it, and if it's in the health spectrum, it's not something I have responsibility for.

Natural Resources committee  It isn't. I don't speak for health, but I predicted that because of the population growth that we've been experiencing, there's been a better representation of doctors. Many of them, again, are probably coming through immigration programs. So we have a lot of doctors who have com

Natural Resources committee  It's not anything I'm familiar with at all. I know that many companies have doctors on site. If they're large enough, they typically have a physician, but they are not for your regular maintenance. They are for back-to-work type of analysis. I would hope foreign workers are able