Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My comment is in regard to the Department of Education and the whole area of human resource development, starting to work with the students, especially when they go into high school or the upper grades preparing them so they know what type of career they want to get into. One thing that has to be done in regard to the Human Resource Strategy or studies is you have to look at a community and see what the community has to offer to our students who are presently in the school system. We find a lot of our students who graduate from the smaller communities say there are no job opportunities. I will use the smaller communities where you have certain sectors that students can get into, such as nursing, policing and administration in regard to working in the different band offices and the administration offices of the hamlet councils. You identify all the human resource opportunities in all our small communities so that the students, when they start taking their different courses, develop them for a scenario knowing where they are going to be, once they conclude high school or university. When that process is concluded, they know there will be an opportunity for them once they go back to their communities, either in nursing field, policing, administration, finance or the different structures or hamlet offices.

We have to start developing or training in the education of our students with the emphasis there will be a job for them, once they take these different programs and extra university courses, when they do conclude, there will be room for them in the communities. They can come back home without having to go home with these different degrees with no opportunities there. This is something I would like to mention in regard to those different developments.

Also, working along with different aboriginal organizations, we now have different claims being settled, where there is a claims institution being developed. You have different regimes in regard to land and water boards. You have land use planning boards where there is going to be a need for biologists, people with different degrees on the engineering side, when you talk about the land management. We have to start working along with the communities, the aboriginal organizations and the different institutions that are in our regions to identify what those opportunities are, so when students do conclude their education and higher learning, those opportunities are there.

In regard to the different economic sectors, we have to start

developing other sectors and economies. There have been a lot of effort and work done in the Department of Education, especially around the mining sector, but we have to expand that to include the forestry sector and oil and gas sector, where there are still opportunities there. Looking at the tourism sector is one, the key areas that have possibly the most opportunities to offer a lot of the smaller communities, especially with the potential that tourism has for the north. We are seeing the increase of the Japanese tourists in Yellowknife looking at the northern lights and looking at the beauty and prestige of the land that we have in the Northwest Territories. We should start developing different opportunities in those communities for eco tours to the areas of big game hunting to looking at fishing lodges in the different regions. There is a sector there that has to have continued development to start looking at those sectors to ensure we do not loose sight of different sectors by concentrating on one particular area. We develop the scenario that we have taken into light, all the different sectors to combine the other opportunities.

There has to be more real emphasis in the cultural component of the Northwest Territories. A lot of the aboriginal people have a real cultural history and background, in the time before the Europeans came, so people could explain the uniqueness of the different cultural groups from the Inuvialuit to the Gwich'in exactly how they governed themselves before contact with the Europeans to identify the different lifestyles they live and the different cultural practices that they do from harvesting to gathering, basically, how they are able to survive in the Northwest Territories over time. We have to build this cultural component into our education documents we develop and some sort of a learning program or curriculum so that there is a cultural component to the delivery of education.

The other area is one that factors around income support and that field, where it is an important program, especially to a lot of the smaller communities. In the Minister's statement, he talked about the health food basket in the Northwest Territories. We have to realize a lot of these people going to income support are a lot of times, harvesters, who want a little bit of revenue to be able to go out on the land to acquire food products such as fish, caribou or moose or anything they can bring home to offset extra costs, especially with the high cost of food in a lot of our smaller communities where a lot of this stuff is flown in. You come to Yellowknife where a lot of people are baffled by the price of food compared to a lot of our smaller communities because it is so high in the smaller communities. The program has to be more developed in the context that our people in the communities have a skill, but it has to be recognized as all other skills, when it comes to harvesting skills, they are able to use that skill to sustain themselves by going out in the bush or on the land trapping and harvesting wildlife to bring it home to their families to offset the extra cost of having to purchase food from the Northern Store, Co-op or wherever.

The other area I wanted to touch on is there does not seem to be much discussion on disabilities, not only in our education systems, but in a lot of those smaller communities where you may have someone who is disabled, especially a young child and trying to get them to fit into society. A lot of things we take for granted as healthy human beings. The disabled find it awfully hard, especially accessibility to public buildings and libraries and transportation, for the individual to take them from school and home or treat him on the same basis as other students. He may have a disability and he has the same right to learn in all our schools in the Northwest Territories.

Those were some of the things I had concerns about. I will probably be asking more questions when we come to a different departmental section of the budget. Thank you.