Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I'll go first. Mr. Speaker, today I spoke about the next generation workforce. My questions today are for the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment. Mr. Speaker, my statement, as I mentioned, was talking about the need that we have in order to address the educational and skills gap due to the advancement of innovation and technology. I would like to ask the Minister: can the Minister describe how the Skills 4 Success program is helping us prepare for the future of work for our young people in these days of, call it, massive technological change? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Masi. Minister for Education, Culture and Employment.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Skills 4 Success document is actually, in my opinion, a great document. It was done in partnership with the Conference Board of Canada, and it was a 15-year forecast of the jobs that will be needed within the territories, so it's really important. There was a lot of work done with this. The Member was right. The occupations are changing. The way we do jobs is changing, so this is really critical. We're using this document to look at all of our educational programming and our training programs throughout the territories. We are also using it in our high schools within our pathways to help guide children on deciding what education they need to be able to achieve their career goals. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you to the Minister for her reply. I, too, agree that Skills 4 Success is a great program. Like many programs, we've got to be able to have the ability to adapt on the fly when need be. I know that the Minister said previously, and, I believe, in the House yesterday, that she wasn't necessarily qualified to design educational programs, and that's understandable, and prefers to leave that to the experts. Will she agree that, as Minister, she will lead the department to anticipate technological and workplace change to prepare our students for the future work that will be very different in the future?
I would like to clarify about yesterday, for sure. Yes, I did make that comment. I should clarify. It's not that I can't make decisions. I can make decisions. I can decide whatever I want to decide. The reality is, I don't believe in doing that. I believe in best practices. Best practices means that you get the most qualified people around to give me advice to make strong political decisions. So I will correct that, to start with.
Then, absolutely, like I stated in the first answer, the Skills 4 Success is a very progressive document, in my opinion. I will be using that document. I will be giving direction to anyone who works with Education, Culture and Employment that they use that document, the forecast of what's going on, the changes within the job market for developing any programs, any courses that we offer. So yes.
Thank you to the Minister for that reply. I'm wondering: can the Minister commit that, given that the potential for potentially a new education institute in the form of a polytechnic university for the Northwest Territories might move ahead, that she will seek to build partnerships, but in particular with business and industry as well as with academia to help keep education for Northerners ahead of the curve, especially with the advancements of technology and innovation?
At one time in my life, there was a time when I thought I could do it all alone. I'm almost 60 years old, and I've realized that that's wrong. I do need people around me to provide me support. So yes, it's really important, actually, that we engage with all partners, the labour force, academia, everyone who has a stake in this. We cannot do this alone in isolation. This has to be a comprehensive, inclusive strategy as we move forward.
Masi. Oral questions. Member for Yellowknife North.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thank you to the Minister for her commitment to wanting to build relationships. These will be critical as we move ahead. Yesterday, Mr. Speaker, I spoke about a new initiative to combine traditional ways of knowing with modern design and innovation to create new, let's call it, knowledge clusters. Can the Minister talk about the importance of incorporating traditional knowledge with the new technologies to create a uniquely northern system of lifelong learning? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I'm going to try not to make this answer too long, because I could go on talking about traditional knowledge all day because I believe it's important to take that into consideration. This is the knowledge of our people. This is the knowledge of people who have brought history. It's not today's knowledge. It's historical knowledge that people have learned from, so we need to incorporate that into it.
I am going to use a concrete example, if I may, Mr. Speaker. When I was the Minister of Housing, I went up north to one of the communities, and we had built some senior's complexes. Because mainstream knowledge had said, build them along the street so that it looks nice from the street, we built them along the street. The reality is the people within that community kept saying, don't build them that way, because the wind blows and there will be a problem. We never listened, and you know what happened, Mr. Speaker? The wind blew, and we couldn't open the back doors. So yes, we need to incorporate traditional knowledge in what we do. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
We always learn the hard way. Oral questions. Member for Yellowknife Centre.
