That is correct, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to thank the Minister for that confirmation and with that, it gives me some concern because I have raised issues in the area of the education system for quite a number of years since I became a Member and the previous Assembly as well.

In fact, when we look at this, I just have to say this comment as well. It has been said before that a strategy without funding is nothing more than a campaign slogan.

Mr. Chairman, if this system is built on the existing system and we are talking, for example, in career development of stay-in-school campaign and career technology studies, career development, how is it going to be tied to there? I brought an issue up, for example, to the Social Programs Committee as they went through business plan reviews and I was given information that, in our existing system, we have quite a concern. In fact, I will use my community for some specifics.

Right now, this year, there are approximately 25 percent, or a quarter of our high school students going into the program level of 16,26,36. That will be the high school level. That is a system that we have adopted. We have joined with the Alberta curriculum and joined that and that program has been reduced. Their credit value has been reduced from five credit courses to three credit courses. So my understanding, unless there have been recent changes within the department, and hopefully there have been because I know the committee raised it on my behalf, but there should be some changes if it has not been taken on.

The fact is, anybody who is in that program of 16-26-36 courses, they can successfully complete all of those courses and, at the end of that time, they will not have enough credits to get a diploma. I know there is a bridging process put in place for those students to write the English 33. I guess it is to try to bridge them up to qualify for a grade 12 diploma. The fact is that is adding almost an extra year in some cases to some of these students, costing this government even more money.

Number two is that when we talked about career development or pre-technology courses or apprenticeship programs, my understanding is within these courses as well, some of the criteria for the math and the sciences would not allow a student who successfully completed that program to be able to challenge a pre-trades exam and pass it successfully.

Now I am aware that there has been ongoing work within the regions in the area of, what they call SNAP. I guess the Department of Education has worked on that, Students North Apprenticeship Programs. However, because the criteria in some of these courses do not tie up with challenging the exam, they are having problems with this. I know there has been work done by those in the district education councils throughout the Territory on the SNAP access program, which would provide the proper courses and criteria to challenge the exam and pass it successfully.

You know, I look at this and I say, Well, it is very good and well that we are planning this, however, for example, 2000-01, we are three quarters through the year. It is pretty well done and we do not have a wooden nickel to show for this plan. You rub that wooden nickel and a plugged nickel together and we still get nothing. I agree.

I have just been passed a note and another colleague of mine reminded me of the other issue tied to the SNAP access. In Alberta, the 16 and 26 program is an occupational program, an integrated occupational program. That is how they have addressed this 16-26-36 course, so that students coming through that system, at the end of their twelfth year can get a diploma that shows potential employees that these students are work ready and can qualify for entry level jobs in the field.

Right now, my concern is if this does not change, and just addressing the community of Inuvik, in the high school this fiscal year, we are setting up a quarter of our student population for failure. That is unacceptable. No matter how grand you tie a program and a plan together, if our existing system is not functioning, we are throwing good money after bad, in a sense. You tie all of this to one of my pet peeves for awhile, and I know that this might get the blood pumping in some people that I know, but it is in the social pass area. That is an area that we allow to happen.

It is almost as though we are working on quantity, not quality. I know there are studies out there that say it is not good to give a student a test and have them fail and they would be marked with that for the rest of their life. I came through a system that was rather rigorous, that you had to pass exams to get through to the next grade and I think I came out okay.

The Beaufort Delta region has actually instituted a number of tests throughout. It is an area of concern. I think that if we can get funding for this proposal, all the better. However, we better ensure the existing programs we have are working and are producing quality students, students who can write challenged, pre-trades exams. We want students out of school ready to take on the apprenticeship programs that will be available out there.

We are pushing, for example, BHP. When the Diavik mine comes on, if we are pushing them to hire North, then let us train apprentices. If we have a bunch of students come out of our school system and they cannot challenge the tests, that is not a ringing endorsement for our system. That is a very difficult area and I hope that there is work going on. Maybe there are some changes in the midst right now or in the process of happening. If there are, I would applaud this department for being proactive in this area and taking the necessary steps. Right now, as I understand it, we are setting up some of our students for failure. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The proposal that is before the Members is one that has been submitted to the federal government. It was worked on for some period of time and was being developed and was tied to the Non-Renewable Resource Strategy. We have to have a context in which to do work in and in which to move forward. If we had funding, in what way would we dedicate it to address the issues of human resource development? I think that we have done that. We have it here in a package and it is one that gives the context.

I want to emphasize the word context in that. Every government organization, any business needs a plan, a vision of how to address the issues. In our case, it is issues of development. We needed to put that down in some format and some framework, and I believe, again, that we have done that. It gives a guide to where potentially we could funnel funding if and when we get this.

The issue was one of ensuring that we start looking at the activity that is potentially going to happen over the next couple of years. It is starting to come on us fairly rapidly, as we all know. It is okay for all organizations to say, hey look, how are we going to address that? It would be wrong for us not to try and put that into a framework as we have done. That is the reason this is here.

There may be questions with regard to the content of the context. No doubt. I do not think we should be saying that it is wrong to have a plan. I think we do have a plan and this is what it is. Is it adequate? Well, we have done some forecasting and we feel that we could go for the moon of course, but we feel this is realistic to start with.

Now, with regard to some of the questions about the 16-26-36 programs, I would like to have Mr. Cleveland address those particular questions, as well as those regarding the social passing. Perhaps he could address that as well.

Yes. I believe that I certainly understand in general terms the sequence of the type of development and the process that happens. Perhaps not in the kind of detail that Mr. Nitah is familiar with because he has worked in the resource industry, but I am a bit familiar with it. Our design here did take that into consideration, to look at the sequence. We have been in contact with industry and obtained information from industry so that we can look at the sequencing and address the issues as we go.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Nitah is certainly making some good points about the fact that we should not be addressing only the entry level type of jobs. That certainly is not our intent. It is a four-year plan and we have every intention, when it comes to the content of this, that it should address all areas of employment, not just the areas where people enter the training positions and entry level type positions. From there, it should be taken to the higher levels and assist individuals in that. It is going to take a whole cohesive effort in order to do that; the college system, on-the-job training, industry, aboriginal governments, aboriginal groups, small businesses, the whole sector.

We feel we have in generalities addressed that in the report because it is a four-year plan. Yes, it is perhaps ambitious, but we have to be ambitious in this day and age. Yes, there is a potential of that "if the pipeline is not built" attitude, but we have to take the position that we need a plan. We have to have a plan to go ahead with. I think we have done the right thing in that, to take this step and produce this particular document and this approach. That is important for us.

So to restate the comment, we are not just looking at the basic education levels and the entry level type of jobs. We are looking at this being four years of planning for all areas of potential employment and to allow our people to progress. If they are in a position where they can advance from lower management to middle management to upper management, that should be our intent. We need to do whatever we can in that whole area. We believe that we have the basis for that in place through the school system, through the college system and some of the supplementary types of programs, apprenticeships, occupational training, mine training courses and so forth. Thank you.

I appreciate the Member's comments on that and certainly I will take that under advisement. The report, of course, while it has years on there, it could potentially be extended once funding...we do not expect that we will get $12 million up front. It would be nice if we did but we expect that it will be funded in different fashions if and when this comes forward from any kind of commitment that we may get from the federal government.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I was wondering if you have anybody else on the list, if I could come after them, please?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I too have some real problems in regard to the study, especially when you start looking at statistics where you have areas as high as 30 percent unemployment. You start looking at the different age brackets with people with less than a grade 9 education where you are looking at almost 40 percent and then people with less than a high school diploma, which is again almost 35 percent.

That alone is a challenge that we are facing. We can talk about the potential in the resource sector but unless we deal with the literacy and the low education rates we have within our population, we will have to continue to face these challenges of trying to get the people qualified to meet the requirements of these jobs.

Sure the employer can offer us all the jobs in the world but they also have to realize that they have a liability to themselves, their shareholders and also in the investment that they make, with a lot of this equipment. They want to know that they have qualified people operating equipment. You are talking, a rock truck, for example, in the range of $3.7 million. You want to know that person is trained and has the experience.

One of the problems I see, especially in my riding, is we have a lot of people that do get their certificates to be truck drivers and what not. Then, at the end of the day, they cannot get a job because the requirement for getting a job with a lot of the major trucking companies, Robinson Trucking Ltd. and other companies in the North, is you have to have a minimum of five years driving experience. However, you cannot get that experience unless you have someone willing to take that risk, take you on the job site to allow you to get those hours to get that experience and get yourself into a permanent job position with a company or what not.

The biggest challenge I see us facing is improving the statistics that we have regarding literacy and also ensuring people have the qualifications to be able to operate and maintain equipment that is going to be used for a lot of these major resource developments.

One of the areas that I feel that we as a government have to do more to expand on and improve in is the resources. It seems like everybody is competing for different financial resources for education. We have education dollars that come from the federal government. We have dollars that are held through different scholarships, through different agencies. We have aboriginal organizations now who head up their own education and training departments where they give out scholarships. They maintain certain federal dollars. Ourselves as a government, we have scholarships through the student financial assistance programs. We have other programs through manpower.

I think it is essential that we somehow streamline these resources and pool them so that we can try and get as much or the best use of the system that is in place because it is pretty confusing to most people. I think we have to do more to work with organizations and agencies. A lot of these developments that are going to take place are going to be regional based and I think we have to do more to work with those regional institutions through the Arctic College programs, through the district education councils and also in the communities with the DEAs.

In a lot of our communities where I see a lot of these problems, as you are looking at those statistics, a lot of those statistics are community-based, where we see the high ratios of unemployment and what not. However, in most of our communities, we have adult education programs. We have facilities in place in the communities, but because of the lack of funding, a lot of these programs cannot be delivered. I think we have to start looking at trying to ensure that we work along with the aboriginal groups and the regional education councils to try to utilize those resources because the timing of these developments that we are talking about, you are looking at, in some cases, just a matter of months. The Beaufort Delta oil and gas activity is already happening. We are talking about the possibility of a pipeline. You are looking at six or seven years. In order for a person to work on a pipeline and, say you get your journeyman's ticket as a welder, you are looking at almost three years.

In order for those people to take advantage of it, they have to be in the schools. They have to be getting trained now so they can take advantage of those programs.

I think that we have to start looking at mentorship programs along with industry. I talked to a lot of people within industry. They also have resources that they are willing to put into training people and ensuring that we do get the people in positions, but it is going to take a while because a lot of these people do not have the qualifications.

However, industry is willing to work along with government to ensure that we work with industry, who has the opportunities, but ourselves, as the government, who has resources to ensure training takes place.

I think it is essential that we as a government do not try to do something that someone is already doing. We have institutions in place that have already taken on a lot of these efforts.

I will use an example regarding Fort McPherson. We have a negotiated contract in regard to the highway contract that is in place. Almost 80 to 90 percent of the employees that work there are from the community of Fort McPherson. However, a lot of these young men and ladies went south to take their training through program dollars that they received from Indian Affairs.

They worked with the Department of Education to make sure that we had the resources and we did the projects. However, a lot of those programs that they took on, instead of sending all our students out, they brought resource people into the community, kept them there for six to eight weeks, put on the program in the community where everybody had access to that program. It was not just restricted to a handful of people.

I think that is what we have to start doing. We cannot afford to take on these programs or develop these programs. We have to use people in the private sector who are already in place to provide that service. We have to use it.

I think that we do not try to start to be the government that does all for everyone to try to ensure that we are involved in everything. We have to use the private sector in a lot of these areas, especially when it comes to the areas where we need special services.

The oil and gas industry...we need people to work on rigs. There are outfits in southern Canada. There is a PITS program based out of Edmonton that trains people in the oil and gas industry to work on rigs. We have companies out there, Akita Drilling, Shehtah Drilling. These companies are already in the North. They are working. They need these people just as much as we need those jobs.

I think we have to ensure that we do more to get people in those sectors. I think the first thing we have to do is face the challenge that we have such a low-educated population, that we have to bring up those numbers as soon as possible, through correspondence, whatever we have to do, but that is where the problem is. In this report, that is the first thing that jumps out at me, those statistics in regard to looking at the grade levels in our different communities and looking at the unemployment statistics.

Again, I think it is crucial that we do that. I think that this government has to give up some of our authority when it comes to programs such as student financial assistance. We have to allow agencies that are already in the communities or regions the ability to manage those programs, to assist students at the regional level or the community level without looking at having it centralized.

Those are some of the areas I have concerns about. I think that there is a possibility of working them out, but I think that we have to do it in conjunction with not trying to solve our problems or do everything for everybody here.

We have to use the resource sectors that are out there, industry, the aboriginal governments, and we have to work with the federal government on most programs. I think the key to this is improving on our low education statistics and bringing them up as soon as possible, so those people can go on to post-secondary education and also get training that is needed to get them those jobs when they are here. That is the biggest challenge we are facing. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.