Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As a couple of my colleagues have indicated, it is Education Week and we tend to think of youth when we think of Education Week, but I wanted to take this opportunity to highlight the efforts of BHP Billiton in dealing with literacy issues and challenges in the workplace.
We know that literacy is an obstacle for many Northerners looking to gain meaningful employment. BHP, on opening their mine, recognized that there were significantly lower levels of literacy in the North and 20 to 25 percent of their workforce were struggling somewhat with literacy and they decided, Mr. Speaker, to do something about that.
The program that they have embarked upon allows - and I think this is very key - employees to receive paid work release time to attend learning sessions. It's one thing, Mr. Speaker, to offer it on an employee's down time or off time and if they are so inclined, to ask them to attend, but they actually give people time off in order to study and work. I think that's very important.
BHP recognized when they were setting this up, Mr. Speaker, that it was going to be a win/win. They knew that the program would help their employees to improve their self-esteem and it certainly would help them make the transition into trades, and that's critical if we are going to get our northern people up into the more meaningful levels of employment and the more lucrative types of employment, Mr. Speaker. Success in trades and certification in trades does, in large part, require significant levels of literacy.
Mr. Speaker, of course, there is always some self-interest in industry and they knew that for their company, it was certainly going to mean a safer and more productive workplace and it would improve communication within all levels of the organization, Mr. Speaker, and productivity would also be on the rise. It would also allow them to continue to hire a northern work force from all of our northern communities and this is something that they have made a large commitment to do.
So after sitting down and discussing their program with BHP officials, I decided to nominate them for an award sponsored by the Conference Board of Canada. They have something called Excellence in Workplace Literacy. I nominated them for this award. I hope they are successful. I know they have been to many industry forums to talk to other people in industries about best practices and I think they are really doing some good work and I hope my colleagues will join me in thanking them for that good work. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
---Applause