Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As we are coming to the end of session, I thought that it was important to re-raise the issue of the literacy strategy that this government is working on. I hope indeed that the next time we get together to meet, we will be discussing how to implement the new strategy, because I think that it is one of the most critical issues we face today, Mr. Speaker.

Indeed, I met a gentlemen the other day at a function who asked me what I thought the most important challenge was for us to rise up and meet in the Northwest Territories. I thought about it for a few minutes and decided that I thought training was going to be very important for us, Mr. Speaker. We are faced with the potential of immense economic opportunity but these opportunities will pass us by, Mr. Speaker, if we do not have, folks who are trained. He said to me that yes, indeed, training will be critical and we will have to work with industry to ensure that Northerners are trained.

However, he suggested to me that it was important to realize the industry would find a way to hire southerners if we were concerned only with training our people who did not have a basic level of education and did not have literacy skills, Mr. Speaker. I think that it is important for us to realize that we put a lot of money and a lot of effort into education, into adult basic education and into literacy.

BHP, Mr. Speaker, has recognized this and they are embarking on their own literacy strategy and spending considerable dollars in this area. We cannot continue to be focused on protectionist strategies. Socio-economic agreements are fine, Mr. Speaker, and they are a good idea to get us started, but eventually we are going to have to be competitive with the south if we hope to employ Northerners and hope to ensure that these benefits do not pass us by.

I would suggest that we have been employing somewhat of a push strategy for getting our people hired. I think we want to concentrate, Mr. Speaker, on the pull. Let us educate our people. Let us concentrate on literacy, so that when we train them, we are training the best people possible.

Mr. Nitah spoke earlier about the need to wage the war on poverty. Mr. Speaker, I believe that he is right. I believe the war on poverty starts with education. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

-- Applause