Mr. Chairman, there are approximately nine or 10 items that I could run through, if the Member would like. There is $6.7 million that is proposed in O and M new initiatives and $2 million proposed in capital. I will list the capital items first. There is $300,000 in our budget for the building and learning strategy. In the past, the building and learning strategy has always been funded through supplementary requests to the Legislature. So this is a first in that it is shown in the main estimates. I don't think it is a new initiative; it is just because it isn't usually in here that we are showing it now.

We have $1.2 million for technology infrastructure development, which is a combination of both hard and soft infrastructure needs to make sure that all of our schools across the Northwest Territories are prepared to take advantage of the new technology, so we can improve our ability to provide distance education. This is one of the things we need to be able to improve in order to assure smaller communities that the programs being offered in their communities are of an equal calibre to the programs offered in the larger communities. There are fewer resources in terms of teachers in the smaller communities, so distance education is very important for us to be able to improve as we get into grade extensions in the smaller communities.

The next item is $500,000 for small-school senior-secondary schooling. This is just a small allocation of funds to try to assist those schools where grade extensions are scheduled to take place with minor changes that may be required to help them provide the education to high school students. In most communities, schools were built for up to grade 8 or 9. As you can understand, bringing in older students does sometimes require that there be some small physical changes made to the schools to accommodate the teaching of the programs in the schools.

Moving to the O and M side, we, as a department, have allowed $1.5 million for workforce adjustment, which may be required for downsizing initiatives within the department. As I mentioned in my opening comments, we have $2 million for investing in people. This $2 million is all coming from this government. For the past two years, there was an $8 million cost-shared program with the federal government. So there was $4 million from this government and $4 million from the federal government to provide this program. It was only a two-year program that the federal government got started on, so we knew it would end. I have been unsuccessful in getting the federal government to reconsider continuing the program, so all we have to put in is this $2 million.

As mentioned in my opening comments, we have $1 million in here for an early intervention program in which Education, Culture and Employment is playing the lead role. We are working at coordinating early intervention across the Northwest Territories with Health and Social Services and tying together the federal programs which are being offered across the Territories. With that $1 million, we are hoping to wind up with a much bigger program than we otherwise could if we can get both GNWT departments and the federal government to work together on how the programs are offered.

We have $800,000 for a labour force planning and development program. This is a combination of programs. That is broken down further into four different programs. We will be offering a pilot project on pre-engineering technology. There has been a shortage of Northwest Territories residents who we have seen taking postsecondary education in the fields of technology. So the college will be offering a pilot project this year to try to encourage more students to get involved in the technology field. We have $100,000 identified for that project.

We have $300,000 identified for mining training. This should offer programs in four different communities in the Northwest Territories. This is the sort of program I mentioned in my opening comments with Lutsel K'e. As well, it may include heavy equipment operator training, et cetera. There are a number of mining courses that the college offers. The intent is to offer these courses in Dogrib communities and in areas where the potential is best for northerners to get jobs in the mining field.

We have $200,000 identified for a labour force plan and survey. This is to ensure that the department is prepared to put its initiatives or its training dollars into those areas where we can see development taking place; in other words, making sure we are getting best bang for our buck. We need to have a planning exercise to make sure that we aren't just flying off the handle and saying we need mining training here or there. We need to make sure we have a coordinated approach. To do that we need to spend some money and time developing a plan. That is what that is intended to do.

The last $200,000 of the $800,000 is for a workplace literacy project. That is a program to ensure that we can get more people into the workforce. As the Member will know, we have a lot of unemployed people in the Northwest Territories. Their numbers tend to be disproportionately representative of those who are very poorly educated. This is an attempt to try to improve our ability to get more of those people into the workforce.

The next item we have, Mr. Chairman, is 900,000 in support for community programs, training and development. That is made up of three different subgroups. This could get to be quite long if I start breaking down all of these initiatives, Mr. Chairman. Maybe I will just give the totals and if the Member wants more detail on them, he can ask me specifically.

So the $900,000 goes to support for community programs, training and development. We have $100,000 for technology infrastructure development. We have $250,000 in O and M for the small-school senior-secondary schooling requirements. We have $150,000 for improving student achievement. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.