Thank you, Madam Chair. I wanted to comment a bit on some comments that I heard other Members make in the past couple of days.

First of all, in regards to the Investing In People initiative. Investing In People is adult basic education, or upgrading. The intent of this particular investment is to put part-time or full-time adult education coordinators in the small communities that do not currently have them, including three in the Inuvik region, Tsiigehtchic, Paulatuk, and Sachs Harbour. Another three in the Sahtu region. Another four in the North Slave region. Five in the Deh Cho region. Three in the South Slave region. Yet, it seems as though some MLAs are saying they do not want people, these communities, to get these. It is hard for me to understand that because education prepares people for jobs. When people are educated, they have more of a choice in what type of a job that person gets. But, it is not only preparing people for jobs. It also improves their lifestyle. It is a fact that in general, educated people are healthier, they have higher employment rates, in other words, it is easier to get a job, and they are not as poor as those less educated and generally they have less children.

In simple terms, educating adults saves us money. We are talking about less social assistance, lower health care costs, and also less education costs in the future, that is because educated people's children are more likely to succeed in school themselves. First, once a person is educated, they can help their own children with homework. After all, it is pretty hard to help your kid with something like fractions if you have never heard of fractions. Secondly, educated people seem to place a higher emphasis on education. Again, I am talking in general. Also, if your children see you getting educated, they grow up expecting to do it themselves. In fact, my child is only 10 years old and he is already talking about which university he is going to go to because he has seen myself and my wife and my oldest son all going to university.

I also heard people complaining about others taking more than one course. I do not hear any complaints about people getting doctorate degrees. In fact, people with doctorates are quite respected. It takes around 19 years to get a doctorate degree. First, you have to graduate from junior high, then you have to get a high school diploma. Then you have to get a bachelor's degree. Then a master's degree and only then, a doctorate. Yet, some people here would seem to begrudge people because they take two or three different courses. Why? In today's job market you need to be versatile. People taking more courses should be applauded. It takes courage to go back to school as an adult. I know because I went back to school as an adult. It is very difficult to stop going to school and go back to work and then back to school again. Very difficult. You have to quit your job, you do not know if you are going to get another job when you come back. You do not know if you are going to have housing when you come back, if you are renting. That is why I always encourage people to take more schooling while they are currently in school. I say people should not complain about others taking too many courses unless they have gone back to school as an adult themselves. Unless they know what it is like to not be able to get a job because they are not trained. Others say that it is not government's place to find ways to get people employed. I disagree. I believe it is government's job to train people. The federal government is currently getting out of training. Every day it is more and more on our shoulders to improve the opportunities for jobs. We need to try to help businesses, the first nations, the metis locals, and the municipalities put more people to work. After all, it is our people out there who are unemployed. It is our responsibility. It is not only our responsibility though, it makes good economic sense.

People also talked about mega-projects such as road construction and mines. Those things are all right, but you need trained people to work on mega-projects. What happens if someone is already trained in an area but they need further training to work on a mega-project. Do we reject an application because this person already received some training at Arctic College or Aurora College? Also, mega-projects are not the only solution. The Northern Employment Strategy Program is to help people with community empowerment. Cost shared dollars for community empowerment to implement community justice, to work at the friendship centres, at the band offices, or the metis locals. There are many opportunities there to supplement the funding and to get programs running better or simply to provide office experience. Then I also heard something about women taking cooking classes. I commend women for going out and taking cooking classes. They are taking a step to get their own job. Many of them have not worked before and they have raised children. Now they want to get into the work force. You do not learn commercial cooking at home. Cooking classes help people to learn all kinds of new things. They learn to cook in camp settings, for crews and you do not learn this overnight. Many times you have to go more than once. It is the same as anything else. If you are an apprentice, you have to go more than once. You usually go four years. Cooking should not be any different, although I am not a cook myself. I am assuming that. I have known people to take more than one course. They told me they were learning something new each time.

There was talk of people painting fences in cemeteries over and over. Madam Chair, the committee that worked on this does not want students or anybody to paint things over and over. Cabinet certainly is not looking at that. We are not talking about make-work projects. For the most part, they should be meaningful jobs, helping people to get office experience. Helping people complete community initiatives. Once again, as I mentioned before, we have instituted many initiatives which could cost-share dollars in the area, particularly of community empowerment, community justice, friendship centres, band offices and metis locals. All these organizations are crying for extra assistance because money has been cut.

A Northern Employment Strategy Program would assist these organizations and municipalities with cost-shared dollars. Madam Chair, there is one area that has been overlooked and I think could be looked at. The MLA offices could certainly provide people with good experience, job experience as well as learning opportunities about the government and currently the cost-shared dollars, from what I see of it, would not allow an MLA to cost-share their dollars in order to provide opportunities for students or others to work in their offices for short period of time to give them office experience, that type of thing. I would encourage the Cabinet to look at that.

With that Madam Chair, I thank you for the opportunity to make my comments.