Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the statement made by the -- do I need to worry about the clock here? Okay, thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the statement made by the Minister on trades skill development. It jives well with the statement that I was going to make today on workforce development.
Mr. Speaker, there are a number of projects in the budget which claim to support workforce development simply by being implemented. It will require people to build and operate; therefore, we are building our workforce. But is this really part of a strategically-thought out plan? One of the key problems I see in our economy is that we aren't achieving education outcomes and sending students to post-secondary in sufficient numbers to produce a local workforce so many of the jobs we create go to southern contractors and employees because we can't staff them. Look at the employment numbers for the Giant Mine remediation project, for example. They're sitting at 36 percent northern employment. From 1996 to 2019, around 40 percent of employment at the diamond mines was northern. Meanwhile, our employment rate hovers around 65 to 70 percent overall and 50 percent for Indigenous persons. So there is a lot of room for northern employment growth. A fundamental question raised by comparative analysis is what role should the government be playing in the economy? Is it our role to be industry or to create an attractive investment environment and educate, house, and support a workforce who can take advantage of available jobs?
I recognize that answer isn't black and white. Of course government contracts play a significant role in the economy here but when we're facing tough questions about where to put our money, I think we need to be carefully considering not just the benefits one type of investment might produce but the opportunity costs of that investment compared to others and what outcomes government is best positioned to meaningfully change. This kind of analysis is contained in the Greenland economic report I tabled last sitting and, again, I strongly encourage us to be applying this kind of analysis to our business planning. If northern employment is an outcome we're trying to achieve, let's analyze how best to achieve it and use that information to shift resources accordingly. We can't afford to be doing a little bit of everything and just hoping that it will all somehow come together in the end. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Member from Frame Lake. Members' statements. Member from Inuvik Boot Lake.
