Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And that's a great segue as my questions are also for the Minister of ECE around remediation workforce.
So my first question is what are ECE's objectives from having a staff person sit on the Giant Mine socioeconomic working group? In other words, are we achieving what we're hoping to achieve by participating in that working group? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Sorry, Member, could you ECC or ECE? E, okay, thank you. Thank you, Member. Minister of Education, Culture and Employment.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, this working group is responsible for implementing and coordinating activities to support the multiyear Giant Mine Remediation Project SocioEconomic Agreement, or strategy, and a staff member that we do have sitting on this group is a labour development and standards division staff member, and their role in this group is, I think, a very important one because they provide information on labour market information, training needs, and also employment standards perspectives. Thank you.
Okay, thank you for that. So I'll go to a different aspect. So one of the needs identified by the working group, Giant Mine working group, was for a coordinated training hub in the North Slave region, which I understand the GNWT has been working with a thirdparty organization to establish. Will the training hub increase the amount of training available to Northerners for remediation work, or what is the hub expected to accomplish?
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the Member's correct, ECE did partner with an external entity to develop the North Slave regional training hub. And the goal of this was really to provide and improve coordination between employmentrelated training and potential projects coming to the region. And so I can say to the Member though, in 2023, so last year, ECE shifted its focus to what's called a North Slave regional training partnership, and this was developed under the federal strategic partnership initiative in collaboration with the federal government. And this partnership was established to encourage collaboration between regional training partners and to provide leadership as well in identifying and responding to short and longterm market needs and potential within the market to make sure that we're prepared for what's coming and that we're responding with potential training opportunities for Northerners in the region. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So I understood from that response that the main purpose is to coordinate existing training. Does the Minister believe that there are enough training opportunities for Northerners to be able to take jobs in the remediation economy to increase the percentage of Northerners that are actually in the workforce? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, we have a tremendous amount of training opportunities and education opportunities for people here in the Northwest Territories. And I believe that, really, the response to this question is an allofgovernment response where really it's about making sure that, A, people have access to this training; B, that people are prepared to enter into any kind of training that we are making available, and so I think that this is a coordinated response as far as making sure that people can put food on the table, that people have access to food, that students are going to school, and that it is a domino effect from there. And so I think that as Northerners, we all have a role to play in ensuring that people have access to this, and that includes us in this room making sure that we are putting information out there and connecting the residents that we serve with opportunity. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Minister of Education, Culture and Employment. Final supplementary. Member for Yellowknife North.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So the Minister mentioned a few minutes ago the SNAP program, the apprenticeship program. Has the SNAP program been able to link apprentices or students to work at the Giant Mine Remediation Project? Or what is the plan if not? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, I might add that might have been my influence from the 19th Assembly.
Mr. Speaker, I'm very excited about the SNAP program. The SNAP program has grown tremendously in the last number of years. What the SNAP program comes down to is employers willing to employ students and having the capacity to take students on in order to create those opportunities. So it's something that people are going to hear me talk about over the next four years, ad nauseam probably, in this House because I think it's such a tremendous opportunity, but it's really reliant on that relationship. While, you know, we are not the ITI, sorry, is not the lead department on this relationship, really the lead entity on this is the federal government and they have contracted Parsons to kind of do the contracting work out at Giant Mine. It is really would need to be a relationship with them in order to, if they want, create that as part of their contracting requirement. But, really, I think the better way of going about this is making sure that employers know that this opportunity is available and that we want to support them in order to help create a skilled workforce of tomorrow. Thank you.
Minister of Education, Culture and Employment. Oral questions. Member from Tu NedheWiilideh.
