Thank you, Mr. Speaker-elect. As I've indicated previously, I've had an opportunity to travel around the Northwest Territories to different communities and talked to the residents of the communities. There is a lot of excitement in communities about what they can do, but they often don't feel that they're able to pull off, as with respect to small business, their opportunities.
There are great ideas in the communities. Every community is different. Farming might not be appropriate in Ulukhaktok but it might be appropriate in Fort Liard. We need to be open to what the communities see as their opportunities and work with them to actually provide training in those communities for opportunities that exist, whether it's tourism, green technology, farming, fishing and those types of things. We need to make sure that the training we're providing is focused on those opportunities that exist in the individual communities. This will allow individuals to start businesses, to start their own opportunities with their communities.
I've also heard that a lot of individuals aren't interested in travelling from their communities and working in a mine for two weeks or three weeks, so they're looking for local opportunities. We've indicated, as a government in previous Assemblies, that we do want to decentralize some jobs, and we must continue to do that, but government jobs are not going to solve all the problems. We need to find local opportunities, local businesses that people in the communities can start up and run. But we also do know that there are government jobs coming to communities. There are a large number of nursing positions throughout the Northwest Territories, and that's often done by people who are coming to the Northwest Territories rather than people who are coming from the communities. We need to focus back into the schools and start early to encourage people to pursue things like nursing, resident care aides, home support workers, so that we can get our local people into the professions that actually we do provide in communities as government.
So, a couple things: training and development for government-type jobs, supporting youth in communities to pursue education and training so that they can start their own businesses, and some supports for start-ups so that they can start businesses in communities.