Jackson Lafferty

Mahsi, Mr. Chair. Heritage centres do receive funding, as well, of $491,000. Again, arts councils, culture projects, cultural organizations, when you really look at it in detail, cultural organizations, cultural projects do capture heritage because you work closely with the museum. In the Sahtu region there was a project on the go with ice. So those areas do capture heritage. It may not be upfront, but almost every one of them do capture heritage. Mahsi.

I do believe they do. There are steering committees in place to deal with industry’s needs and also community needs based on their assessment. Through various agencies we’ve been working with as a department they have produced data on individuals that were trained, what year they were trained, and how many are available to work and so forth. We do have that information available through our department and our regional representatives.

We can share it with the Members.

Mahsi. There have been some modules that individuals had to take in the past. It was a part of the certification program. Now we are delivering a diploma program, and if the student is enrolled full-time, then they should be able to complete the program in two years. Again, we’re working closely with the college on this.

There are certification students that are part-time students. Even the diploma program, some are part-time, some are full-time. So it does fluctuate in how long they take on the program, but we’ll provide the Members with the information from the college. Mahsi.

Mahsi, Mr. Chairman. I’m trying to find that information here. The information we have, of course, is based on projection and the enrolment, if it goes down, reflects on the actual budget. Unless my director has more detailed information that he can follow up on.

The overall plan not only of the Mine Training Society but within my department, the Labour Market Development Agreement both from the federal government, we want to reach out to all communities as best as we can. Through the Mine Training Society, the Hay River Reserve and also Fort Providence, and also Kakisa and the surrounding communities, that we can definitely approach and work with the leadership and work with the educators in the communities, as well, also industries. Industries are all partners in this venue.

I will invite the Member to have a more detailed discussion on this...

Mahsi, Mr. Chair. When it was brought up in the House, I did look at the criteria as well. The heritage is laid out as part of the criteria within the policies that we have that we follow. It captures the heritage as part of the program that we currently have. If there’s going to be some name changes, then that would be something that I may have to re-evaluate and talk to certain groups and whatnot. I did take that into consideration when Ms. Bisaro did raise it in the House and I’m currently working with various organizations as part of the process. Mahsi.

Mahsi, Mr. Chair. Through the SEMA agreement, Socio-Economic Monitoring Agreement, there are certain targets in place and with the three diamond mines there are some negotiations that are underway with the potential industries that are coming on board. We have been behind a bit on the target itself. So through time we’ve developed an MOU to work with the three diamond mines. I can refer to the three diamond mines because we’ve been working actively with them and in 2008 we signed on. We’ve made some progress in that area where there’s been some training programs. The Mine Training Society that...

Mahsi. That information that Mr. Devitt referred to was a needs assessment. Those are some of the areas that are part of the process when we talk about the capital planning process. If I may, again, Mr. Devitt can elaborate on the process itself. Mahsi.

Mahsi. We’re very excited about this fibre optic link that’s before us, and we’re hoping that 2014-2015, well, 2014 I guess, the deliverance of the optic. When we met with the Beaufort-Delta on the e-learning, there’s excitement in the air. We’re delivering programs that are not being delivered in small communities as opposed to larger centres. Not only that, but at the same time delivering language apps into the schools and language programming where we have an elder on another screen who can work closely with the students.

There’s so many ways that we can take advantage of the e-learning, the...