Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Earlier today I spoke about the great work that our youth were doing at our national skills competition, mirroring the similar comments mentioned by the Minister of Education himself, as well, on today’s subject.
There is no doubt that we are very proud of the previous Assembly who continued funding for Skills Canada. I applaud the government of the day for making those commitments, because I believe this is an incredible opportunity for our youth. Being part of it and seeing with my own eyes, with the Minister, the great things that we can do with the money that we give organizations. With that, one of the things the Minister and I saw when we were down there was the opportunity for these things called Try-a-trade demonstrations which clearly showed other skill sets that could be promoted and enhanced for the NWT youth. Because the Minister of Education was with me and we saw it with our own eyes, can he commit his department in investigating a department skills challenge and making this possible maybe in the future events? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. The honourable Minister of Education, Culture and Employment, Mr. Lafferty.
Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. I feel that we definitely need to explore this area where demonstration of other skill sets, those talented individuals from the Northwest Territories can be exposed. The Member and I talked about this in length, about the possibility and where we can explore opportunities. I will definitely commit to the Member and this House that we will be further exploring this opportunity on the demonstration of other skill sets at the National Skillset Competition. So I’m committing to that.
Thank you. I do appreciate the Minister for his thinking in this capacity. Again, we saw great things that we could do for our youth to open up doors, polish these gems as we’ve called and talked about. But adding one step further, would the Minister commit to potentially bringing, when we have our own skills competition in our own territory, bringing some of these quality, gifted, talented people in the trades area, bring them here to open it up a little bit better? Again, budgets are tight, I understand that, but sometimes we can bring these people to the Northwest Territories, these talents, so that we can actually encompass and touch more lives in the Northwest Territories. Would the Minister commit to looking at that aspect as well? Thank you.
Mahsi. This is an area where we need to work with Skills Canada. We provide funding to them. I believe its $80,000 on an annual basis and they also have corporate sponsors to bring in those individuals or send those individuals out, those talented Northwest Territories individuals. But I am pursuing this in looking further into potentially having those individuals from the Northwest Territories, maybe one per region, just for exposure at the national stage. They may not be competing, but to see them in action. So those are the areas that I seriously want to look at and possibly having those individuals from outside coming to the Northwest Territories when we have our competition here in the Northwest Territories as well. So that’s an area that we definitely want to explore and see the benefits of it. I’m sure there will be plenty of them. Mahsi.
The Member for Deh Cho, Mr. Nadli.
