Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It is a great day today because we have lots of youth here in the gallery. I want to say hi to everyone up in the gallery.
It was a pleasure attending the 18th Annual National Skills Competition with Minister Lafferty. We attended along with 17 youth. The tireless work of the executive director was Jan Fullerton and other tireless workers of Skills Canada NWT. What we witnessed in Edmonton during this national competition was incredible energy, pride, talent and a lot of passion, an Olympic-style event which made us very proud, especially as the Minister just mentioned, we saw three medal finishers. As I said, there is nothing that makes one more proud than seeing your flag on the huge Jumbotron, so great to see NWT pride in action.
---Applause
Equally, though, we have to be very proud of all our competitors. They did a great job. They showed that they trained very hard. They had some great help. Again, my thanks go out to all participants from NWT and all the trainers.
But more importantly, what we saw during these competitions – and it was taking place on the sidelines – were opportunities of learning with things like technology demonstrations. What we saw were with robotics, graphic design, and these were interactive and very exciting to see. I think our students saw that firsthand, but most interesting was the interactive Try-a-trade where you could touch, you could feel, you could work firsthand with these career options. This is where we both saw an opportunity for our youth, especially those communities in remote locations who would never get a chance to see such a showcase. We need to find a way to get our youth from remote communities in NWT to such venues so they can experience firsthand these lucrative career options and to explore them firsthand and what they can do for them.
As the Minister mentioned today, we need to help build the future workforce of the North. I couldn’t agree more. I challenge a department to a skills challenge to find a way to open this opportunity of sending not only our delegation of Skills Canada NWT winners down to such national events, but to those youth who need that spark, that little push, that opportunity. We have many youth who are diamonds in the rough. They just need a little polish. Let’s give them a hand. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. The honourable Member for Yellowknife Centre, Mr. Hawkins.
