Thank you, Madam Chair. I think one of the things I heard on the campaign trail last fall, and that I've heard from constituents, is the apprenticeship officers that we have in place are doing an absolutely fantastic job, but we just don't have enough of them and they're overworked. I think if we had another one or two of them, we could go out, get some more businesses to sign up for apprentices and we could have more young people actually doing on-the-job training and doing their apprenticeships. That was one of the criticisms that I had heard, Madam Chair.
The other thing I just wanted to get back to was the graduation rates. I think if the government puts some more effort into the technical side of things...I know we have supported the Trades and Technology Centre at St. Patrick's and we also supported the Akaitcho Trade Centre with YK1 at Sir John, but I think it's time we put more money into the industrial arts and home economics. I think too much emphasis in the past 10 or 12 years has been focused primarily on academics. I think we're missing something here and it's starting to come back to get us now, because our graduation rate isn't where it should be. If we can channel our young people to graduate from high school, they might not be in the matriculation routing, but at least they'd graduate from high school, they'd have some skills and pride in themselves to go into the workforce and be dedicated citizens and want to stay and be productive.
Those are just comments, Madam Chair, that I'd like to give to the Minister. I do look forward to him, if he could, providing those statistics I spoke of earlier; of apprentices by region and officers by region. That would be helpful. Thank you.