Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The makeup is about 1,244 full-time students. Of that, 29 percent are Dene, 362; 10 percent are Inuit, 114; 12 percent are Metis, 154; and 49 percent are non-aboriginal, for a total of 614. That gives a total of 1,244 students.

We can give the Member a rough breakdown of the north to south attendance. It will take half a minute, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I was wondering if the clock was going to tick through as they were doing their math.

I think from what I have heard so far, it appears that the makeup of the population using student financial assistance is actually representative of the population in the territories, or fairly close to representative. I think that is a good sign.

It means we have people from across the territories accessing the program. I, Mr. Chairman, would like to encourage the department to take a real good look at rewarding success, for those young people, and some not so young, who have been successful in the system, who have gone out and shown the initiative to undertake higher learning.

I think we should be willing to take the initiative to help them go on and complete their course of study. If that means giving them an extra two years of grant and remissible loan support to help them get to a graduate degree, or if it means that somebody will qualify for four years of funding instead of two years at that level of support, then I think it is important. We need well-educated people to come back to the Northwest Territories to take on some of the job opportunities that we are going to have open up here in the not-too-distant future.

I would really like to encourage the department to take another look at these numbers. I am not convinced that as many people would follow on as they believe would. There is probably room to extend this program.

For instance, when we were going through the department business plan, in committee, we pointed out that there has been a significant amount of money lapsed in student financial assistance last year. We were told that was based on 75 to 90 students, a variance, and therefore there can always be this kind of variance. We are talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars that were lapsed last year.

If there is that kind of variance here, I suspect the department is being overly cautious when they present the numbers. I would really encourage them to relax the rules. If that leads us to a situation where they have to come back for supplementary funding, then let us talk about that at that time. Because if we are in fact rewarding success, I think Members of this House will be inclined to agree that is the way we should be doing business. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will take Mr. Dent's comments as comments. I recognize we need to ensure we get people into education and the workforce. There is a pressure starting to come into the system because of increased enrollments.

We are going to see increased enrollments in the schools. We are going to see an increased need for student financial money to support those students to carry on either to college or university. I appreciate what Mr. Dent is saying. We did spend considerable time looking at this to see how it could be handled. I appreciate Mr. Dent's comments. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I wanted to follow up on something that I had discussed earlier, but before I do that, I just wanted to ask a question on student financial assistance, further to Mr. Dent's question.

I wonder if the Minister has figures on what the rate of students who return after their post-secondary education, and after having received student financial assistance? Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We know that with the aboriginal students, the majority returned. That is, a very large percentage of returns. The percentage of returns from non-aboriginals is about 65 percent. Those are rough figures. We would have to check those, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for that information. I just want to move on to something that I was talking about before. I was talking about having a database of information on human resource needs and capabilities so we could address it better. The Minister made reference to the human resource system that is being undertaken. I was wondering if the Minister could tell us who is doing the system, how long it has been going on, and when will it be ready?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I believe that the human resource development plan that I was speaking of and Ms. Lee is referencing is for the oil and gas industry. I can get her the books that we have available on that, as a matter of fact. It is a quite extensive and very detailed publication. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, so this information is only on the oil and gas industry, and not on anything else? What I was talking about, Mr. Chairman, was if we are going to really address the need to train employable people - I am not talking about people who want to go and study for academic purposes or anything else, but to respond to the demands we have in the Northwest Territories for trainable people to work in industries such as oil and gas and diamonds.

Just to have our own people work in the jobs that we create within this industry, I think we would have to know what is out there. What are the numbers we are talking about? Where are the jobs? We need to know the number of jobs on one hand, and then know how many people out there are trainable to fill those jobs. Is there anything going on in the department in conjunction with Stats Canada or anywhere else that the department could get the information from? Do we have an understanding of what the labour needs are? What the capacity is? I do not know if I am making myself very clear here, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I understand what Ms. Lee is speaking of and what is desired. What is in place at the moment is that there is no single system that addresses that. First, let me state that we work with the Bureau of Statistics to get information from them. We collect it, then, we have programs that address specific areas. As I mentioned, oil and gas is one area. We address it through other strategies that we have. There is no single particular system, and I believe that is what Ms. Lee is speaking of.

Mr. Chairman, I do not want to ask this question again. I wonder if the Minister could commit to provide the House with information on what the department has, as to its understanding of what the job requirements are, and where does the government see the people coming from? Where will we find these people? I do not know. The best that the department could provide. I do not even know how to word it, but I think he knows what I am saying. We should know what we are dealing with. How many jobs are out there? How many of our people could fill them?

Mr. Chairman, I would like to move on to my next question. This government has been talking a lot about the diamond and oil and gas industries. The Premier and Ministers have been going south, telling the people, the business community and the federal Cabinet Ministers, that there are so many resources here, that all sorts of things are happening here, and to come and invest money in us.

At the same time, is anyone going to the communities? What are we doing to have a buy-in among our people? Is it safe to assume that everyone in the communities is as excited as we are in this House about what is going on in the diamond and oil and gas industries? Because I do not think a program is worth anything, any educational program or training in the best universities in the world, even adult education classes in the communities, it can only be achieved through individual initiative.

If the individual wanted to have it, they have to want to work in these diamond mines, in the pipeline, or an office, or go out and hammer the nails. I was at a reception and there were booklets on how to work in the service or oil and gas industry, so I am assuming that there is some work going on by the department to promote some of the opportunities that are available.

I am wondering, if we had more of a focus...are there dog and pony shows going into the communities to say "This is what is happening. Take advantage of it."? What are we doing about it to get everyone as excited as we are? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We will provide the information that we have available that we use for our planning purposes for Ms. Lee. On the question of not everyone in the communities wanting to work in the oil and gas industry, or want to work in the major industries that are out there, I had mentioned earlier in our human resource planning that we have to undertake that.

As I mentioned earlier, we require resources to be able to do the kind of extensive human resource planning that needs to be done. Part of our effort in that end is going to be predicated upon the success of obtaining resources through the Non-Renewable Resource Strategy. If we can obtain those resources, then we can set in motion the kind of program that Ms. Lee is speaking of, whereby we can consolidate, identify and do community consultation work.

The program of human resource development has to address all of the areas, not just the big resource areas, but also the needs in the communities. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just want to clarify that I do not want to look at those booklets. I do not want to be provided with information on... I do not want to know what is available in the oil and gas industry and so on. What I want to know is what is the department doing? What is the government doing to go to the communities and tell the people about this?

It may be that they all know about it, and I am the only one who does not. What programs are there? What kind of promotion are we doing? Is there a campaign going on to let them be aware of the opportunities out there and to generate interest?