Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As I mentioned earlier, we did have a meeting today with Skills Canada and I have some questions here for the Minister of Industry, Tourism and Investment. I wanted to ask the Minister how is his department working with Skills Canada and industry together, to get some of our youth that are taking these trades into some of these jobs that we need in industry. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Moses. The Minister of Industry, Tourism and Investment, Mr. Ramsay.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We are responsible for the socio-economic agreements and, obviously, industry here in the Northwest Territories, but the responsibility for training and skills development rests with the Department of Education, Culture and Employment. So we work closely with the department on advancing their training initiatives. Certainly, in any meetings we have with industry, training is first and foremost in their mind in trying to identify a workforce here in the Northwest Territories, and accessing younger people is something industry is very interested in here in the NWT. Thank you.
Thank you. Under the socio-economic agreements, is the Minister negotiating dollars for this type of training? He did mention it, but I mean specifically for Skills Canada, because Skills Canada are a small office that do a lot of really good work and they have participants who have gone through the program who have won national awards, international awards, and it would be a great opportunity to continue to support these individuals that go through the Skills Canada program. So is the Minister negotiating specific training dollars for Skills Canada so that we can start supporting participants that go through the program? Thank you.
Thank you. ITI is the lead on the socio-economic agreements and there are a number of components included in the SEAs, that’s why we work with Health and Social Services and with Education, Culture and Employment.
On the training side, there is a component to training in the SEAs, and we certainly look to Education, Culture and Employment when negotiating socio-economic agreements so that we can ensure that there is training, that dollars are going to be put into training people here in the Northwest Territories for jobs. We, again, are continuing to work through Mr. Lafferty’s lead with a pan-territorial approach to mine training here in the North, and we hope to see some progress on that in the very near future.
I just want to get a clarification that when the Minister is negotiating these socio-economic agreements that he actually is negotiating for the whole territory and that negotiations are not specific to where the development is currently happening at the time. Can the Minister confirm that he is negotiating for all participants throughout the Northwest Territories so that somebody from the Beaufort-Delta can actually come and get a job in Yellowknife that have the skills required to have the specific job?
The answer to that would be yes, it’s for the entire Northwest Territories.
Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. The honourable Member for Sahtu, Mr. Yakeleya.
