Alfred Moses

Mr. Chair, just a quick follow-up question to this one here. To go ahead with the work and the options, should we come up with a viable option or solution within a short time frame, something that would be effective for the residents, the businesses and government side of things, would the department be coming back to the House with possibly some supplementary appropriations? Would that be an option to see that we do have this LNG supplied to Inuvik, should the results be positive? Would he be willing to come back with a supplementary appropriation to deal with this situation in Inuvik? Thank...

Yes, I’ll move on to this question here then. In the opening comments I’ll refer to some of the discussions that we had with the Minister and the department, but he says that one of his focuses on his actions for 2013-2014 is in recruitment, development and advancement of Aboriginal employees. I also mentioned that it should be focused on northern indigenous employees as well.

When I look at the program delivery details, there is a total cost of $614,000 decrease from last year in the three areas of Maximizing Northern Employment, human resource planning and development, and staff retention...

Thank you, Madam Chair. Just to let the Minister and his staff know that I will probably be speaking to some of the topics that have already been discussed, so don’t feel obligated to answer them again. I just want to show my support for certain initiatives, as well as my concern in some areas. If you feel obligated that you need to answer again and reiterate some of your points, feel free to, but with respect to time and moving forward, you can just try to move on here.

What I’m glad to see in here is under the 20/20 program that the Minister mentions the recruitment, development and...

In terms of devolution and decentralization I really strongly believe that the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment holds a very important role on how this government moves forward in years to come in terms of education and training and getting our people ready to take on these jobs so that we can develop economic prosperity. I’d like to ask the Minister, what’s the status on the Apprenticeship Program for our northern workforce and also our trades program. What’s the status of our Apprenticeship Program throughout the Northwest Territories? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Furthermore to my Member’s statement and preparing for decentralization, but also preparing for some of the work that’s going on in the Northwest Territories, today I’m going to ask the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment what we have planned and in store in terms of increasing our labour workforce. He did make a statement in the House the other day that there’s a labour market symposium going on right now, and I want to see what work this government is doing to prepare and increase labour skilled workforce to meet the needs of our regions that are flourishing...

Thank you, Madam Chair. I move that we report progress.

---Defeated

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I just wanted to say that I look forward to getting information on this labour market symposium and some of the outcomes that came from that.

I’d just like to specifically ask the Minister, has he been coordinating and working with the leaders in my region and my communities in planning for some of the big projects that we’ve got on the timeline here, the Inuvik-Tuk highway, fibre optic link. Is he having those conversations with our leaders so that we can start the training sooner than later, so that when these jobs open up, our local people have jobs ready and are...

I was very happy to hear the Minister make reference to working in partnership with ITI. We must not also forget that we need partnerships with Human Resources, the Department of Health and Social Services, ENR and with some of the energy initiatives that we move forward with.

Can the Minister outline any incentive programs that his department is currently putting through to encourage our young Aboriginal men and women, our young indigenous Northerners the opportunity to take some of these labour jobs in terms of getting ready and prepared for all of the development that’s happening in the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Over the last few months, at the beginning of this government, we have heard a lot about devolution and some statements over the last week on decentralization of jobs. Government positions going out in the communities and the regions are going to be a big thing and something we have to prepare for. In fact, our communities are talking about it, our regional centres are talking about it, and they’re very excited to hear that we are going to be decentralizing some of the jobs into the communities.

With that said, as Mr. Dolynny had pointed out, our education system, we do...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Just following up, as a responsibility to the Department of Health and Social Services working out of the department, I feel that it’s their responsibility to help create these kinds of action plans and move nurses around, should a community need a nurse or need some type of services. Would the Minister commit to looking at that as an action plan for the future so we don’t have to bring these questions up in the House again? Thank you.