Human Resources committee  If the fund builds up, my friends from the Construction Association would say that premiums should be evened off for employees and employers. We don't see that as a problem at all as long as the fund is successful, the investments are good, there are good returns, and that kind o

Human Resources committee  We would certainly say that's a good idea from our perspective, as long as it didn't create a whole other bureaucracy. As workers and employers, we don't want to pay a whole bunch of bureaucrats to work on our behalf. We have to keep that as simple as possible.

Human Resources committee  Certainly we don't want everybody to leave, especially the skilled tradesmen. Just a couple of years ago, Anadarko, a large oil company, wanted to build a $600 million LNG plant, so they came to Cape Breton. The greatest underlying factor that made them decide to go ahead with th

Human Resources committee  I've said here before that this is a good idea, especially if it's trusteed jointly by labour and industry, the people who are paying into it. I know that with our pension funds, if we don't invest things properly as trustees, maybe our houses will be up for grabs. So maybe that

Human Resources committee  I would say the quick response to that is that the employers and the employees have already put the money into an account from which they thought some of this stuff would be taken care of.

Human Resources committee  I'd certainly say that as far as the new financing board goes, which is at arm's length from the government and is going to handle the money for this, it's a good idea, but it should be jointly trusteed by the people who are putting the money into it. As far as the policy goes, f

Human Resources committee  I certainly don't. I think the administration costs and all of that are going to be rolled into that $2 billion. My friends from the actuaries have stated this here, and the chief actuary and the Auditor General of this country have said that in the event of a recession there c

Human Resources committee  From the construction industry side, as I said, some construction is seasonal. It's not truly a seasonal industry, because sometimes it rolls through, but most owners would like to do their work in the good weather. We have a lot more activity in the good months than we have in t

Human Resources committee  Sir, there's one other thing I'd like to ask you before you move on. If you get into a situation like that, where there is a recession and there's a shortfall here.... I don't know who came up with the $2 billion, but the $54 billion that was saved up in this plan was put there

Human Resources committee  That's correct, but I wasn't aware I was on a list for Thursday either.

Human Resources committee  I'm president of the Cape Breton Island Building and Construction Trades Council. We have more than 4,000 members there, and affiliated across the country we have 450,000 to 500,000 unionized building trades workers. As my counterpart has said, in the construction industry our me