Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My question today is that, again going back to the training and the skills that we need to develop especially in our communities where we do have a lot of the frontline workers, I think that it is important that we do carry on the training to do the responsibilities that they have, where the people in social services and the health care system have a whole bunch of paper work that they have to do as part of their responsibility.
I think they do have people there, receptionists and part-time secretarial services, for example. However, I think that we have to improve on that because one of my concerns is, in response to the Minister's opening remarks, when you talk about the lack or short coming of information or reporting back to the central government on how money is being expended.
The problem that I see, especially in the small communities, is that we have people there, but they either do not have the skills or the training to be able to conclude those reports within a short timeframe, or they do not have the tools to do it with.
I will use Aklavik, for instance. I spoke to the department in Aklavik and the little things that we take for granted, where they do not even have a printer for their computers. They have to run somewhere else, print off something off a disk, and run back to their office. I mean, that should not be called for today. They have two computers, one is down and one is working, but yet you have three people in the office. Also, the person that they have for the secretarial service only works half-days.
So there are these little things that are having an effect on the whole area of the sharing of that information and also making sure that the information is developed and also submitted within a short timeframe, because that seems to be a problem. The whole information gathering and making sure that people have those tools.
So those are some of the areas that I feel in ensuring that we have people who do have the resources, but also along with taking on these responsibilities, the government also has to allocate resources for training, skill development, making sure the different resource programs are out there so that people know that when you take on a program, you have skilled labour and qualified people in those different positions.
What we are seeing is the people are put in these positions, but they are put in it either not having the opportunity to take more advancements on their training or on the education skills that are out there where we see a lot of money being lapsed in different areas, especially when it comes to training where it is going back. I think we have to start ensuring that the frontline workers we do have are offered these courses and offered the ability to move up with the training.
So I would like to ask the Minister, what is her department doing to improve the front-line workers to ensure they do have the training and the skill development that is needed to make their jobs easier?