Kevin A. Menicoche

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I’m just trying to get assurances from the Minister that the training will help develop our northern youth and our northern communities, especially to just prepare ourselves for the planned impacts. I believe the Minister made reference to ASEP, the aboriginal skills employment partnerships program. I would just like to ask the Minister that.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, just with respect to Aurora College and possible increased vocational training opportunities to our youth, especially with all the plans of industry and growth that we’d like to plan for in the future. I’m just wondering if there’s appetite within the department to look at alternative training facilities, particularly creating some of those facilities in the Nahendeh riding.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Just for clarification from the Minister, is it necessary that some of the arrangements were so that the term loans become flexible of waiving interest and deferring principal payments? When it's noticed that the business is in trouble, do they try to then look at these different alternatives for the BCC, as opposed to these letters from the lawyers to call in their loans? Thank you.

Mahsi Cho, Mr. Speaker. Today, I would like to speak about debt-free payment and the Business Credit Corporation. I think we all recognize the importance of small business to our economic growth. I think we would all agree that this government should take every opportunity to support our northern entrepreneurs; to advocate for the small businesses.

Having said that, Mr. Speaker, I have a situation in one of my communities that I represent where several small businesses have borrowed money and, through no fault of their own, their business ventures have failed. They did have loans with the...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will reserve my comments for later. Thank you.

---Laughter

Thank you very much. I can appreciate also some of the local resource problems with regard to aboriginal languages and culture. Some of the things that lead me to think that it can be improved more efficiently is if we use the languages and culture more and it’s more supported by our government and as a result by our education department. For instance, it was brought to my attention the Jewish people in Ontario are all really strongly knowledgeable in their languages and in their culture. I was wondering how an almost dead culture continues to be fluent in their language and their culture. It...

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I’m just trying to ascertain from the Minister whether the priorities that we establish here as the Government of the Northwest Territories, does that become the priorities of the regional divisional education boards?

Mr. Chairman, no further questions at this time. Thank you very much.

Mr. Chairman, I’d like to thank the Minister for that response because that’s the type of thing that I’m particularly interested in. It’s just with respect to if we’re going to identify a priority region, which is happening in this case, in particular with the pipeline training in the oil and gas sector. It’s being impacted in the Deh Cho and I’d like to see at least some future direction, some future concentration of our training, particularly in the trades like welding and carpentry, given thought of in our region. I don’t know if it’s in the particular plans of the department right now, but...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I thank the Minister for those answers. I am sure we, as a government, are indeed looking out for our small businesses. The next question is when someone is utilizing our credit facilities, like the BCC or the NWT Development Corporation, they are, of course, not thinking that they will get into trouble or find themselves in situations where they are unable to pay any loans. I'm just wondering if there's any type of counselling available or advice given to the clients beforehand that if you are in trouble, these are the steps that are going to take place and this is...