Thank you, Madam Chair. Just to follow up on some of the things I said during the general comments yesterday and about the observation made by somebody who was at a function I was at that got me thinking, and that is to do with sort of the over-expanded spreading of training programs that government funds. I think that

issue should be something that's looked at, because we do fund a substantial amount of money for the college. I think the budget we have now is about $26 million or $28.6 million and I think that it's very important for us to have a post-secondary higher learning education program in the North and Aurora College is the headliner in that regard. I hope that someday in the future that that college will grow to be not a full-scale university, but one that could offer programming to those who want some university programming, as well as college programs and training programs and a lot of education programs and training programs that we need to provide to our residents at post-secondary levels. But one thing I have seen lately is a number of things. One is there's a lot of training dollars that the government is spending, whether by contract services or within the government, that I'm wondering if any thought was given to whether those programs could be delivered through Aurora College. Now I want to make sure that in saying so that I am not saying anything contrary or against any of those programs, I'm not making any judgments about those programs, it's just that it's a simple observation that is that if we have a college that is primarily funded by the GNWT, then we should at least in progression of steps I'd like to know that we are least considering whether those training and delivery could happen within the umbrella of Aurora College; if not, I want to know why not. If we don't think that the college could provide this programming, I mean what are the reasons?

We also see that we have a campus for Aurora College in Yellowknife that has been overextended for many, many years and even the campus in Fort Smith I don't think is being used at the fullest extent possible. If there are issues because a campus in Yellowknife is not big enough or it can't accommodate or if there are some concerns about ability to provide programming in Fort Smith for whatever reason, I have no idea what the reasons are and I don't know what steps are in place to accommodate the deficiencies or concerns or issues that we may need to address in order to maximize the use of services we have at this college. I don't really have anything to comment on with Inuvik campus because I haven't had the privilege of visiting that campus lately. Maybe next time I am in Inuvik I will do that.

You know, we need to support the institution that we fund and we may be shooting ourselves in the foot thinking in a broad perspective. Even if we want to do regional training centres, we need to decide whether we want to do that by way of Aurora College. We could have regional campuses in other areas, but I believe that if we keep spending our training funding and disburse them in every direction possible, then I don't think that might be the best way to do that.

I am willing to be convinced that that is the best way, but I need to know that some sort of due diligence and review is going to do that. So I would like to ask the Minister whether he's aware of any situations at Cabinet level or at any level that the government is thinking about training programs, whether they even take a look at whether a program could be delivered at our college. One thing I can think of is community government training. There is extensive training going on from municipal funding and that's a whole institution in itself within our government department. I think under the NWT Tourism Strategy, there is training for tourism operators and I am sure there is mine training going on. There is all kinds of training. There's aviation training.

I would like to know if you can tell us anything on that. If there isn't anything like that, I would like to ask the Minister to undertake a review of all the government departments that provide some kind of training. I would like to get an inventory of that and I would like to know any private contractors we are using to provide training. Lately we get a weekly report of programs being delivered at Aurora College in Yellowknife and much of that is a three-week course here, a one-day course there, and I am told that that is revenue neutral. That's not necessarily the case either. We have a concentration of employees and infrastructure there that are taking care of this. They may not be paying for the program, but the college has to fill the gap where they have to, to provide what they can. I think we need a wider view and picture of what we want to do with Aurora College and how to protect our investment and maximize the use of that. I would like to hear from the Minister in that regard.