Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The department works to encourage companies to take on apprentices in these industries. If funding is provided through ASEP for training programs, those programs are aimed entirely and exclusively at northerners. There are typically jobs at the end of the training programs, and the

funding can be used to make sure that people are ready for taking on apprenticeships with a company. The pipeline operator training course; I know that I met with the group of representatives of the companies who are overseeing that course two weeks ago, and they were explaining to me some of the challenges that they're finding, not just with people not being job ready. They are finding people who are job ready, but in some cases they're finding that they can't find enough people who would otherwise be able to take the jobs on who could pass the screening, the drug screening in particular.