Mr. Chairman, I think the Department of Education, Culture and Employment has to take this seriously. I have a presentation that I received from Chevron Canada and the BP Amoco Burlington Resources, and these are just some statistics that they presented. This is the presentation they made to the Minister of Indian Affairs in Ottawa.

Just on the benefit to the North in regard to this activity, there is 31,190, up to 72,000 person-years of employment. That is a lot of people that need to be hired and a lot of opportunities that are there.

They estimate that it will go from $6.2 billion to $9 billion dollars of financial benefit to Canada with a total of $2.1 to $5.1 billion dollars of the gross domestic product to Canada and an estimated production revenue of $2 billion per year. We are talking about a major project here. I think that in order for us to take advantage of it, we have to start the training now. We have to start developing the curriculum to take on this major project.

We are looking at the possibility of another Tar Sands Project in regard to Fort McMurray. This is big.

I think in order for us, as a government, to look at it, it is just like the diamond industry. You might be looking at the diamond industry, where you are looking at 600 to 700 jobs. We are talking some 1,600 jobs.

I think just the massive requirement of having to try to fill that many positions with well-trained people so that they can have some people making those big wages in the North, we have to have the skills and the quality of people to fill those jobs. I think that is where we need to come in as a government since we are responsible for ensuring that the employment and the career training aspects because we are funded to do that.

I think that we have to take it very seriously. I would like to ask the Minister exactly how soon will you be coming forward with some sort of a strategy or a scenario on exactly the talks that you are having today? How are we going to look at developing curriculum and also look at how we can try to find ways to expand our program and service delivery, especially in the oil and gas area?