Thank you, Mr. Dent. I understand Mr. McLeod had one other question regarding providing information on apprentices in the department. Mr. McLeod had a question earlier to provide information from other departments for apprentices. Can you provide that? Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, I could certainly ask my colleagues if they could find that information and if I can collect it, I'll forward it on to Mr. McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Mr. McLeod.

Thank you, and thank you, Mr. Chair. The $4.7 million we're talking here, that is to pay for the schooling of the apprentices, sending them to school, the accommodation. Are the instructors there, or are the instructors covered under the college, I would assume?

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'm advised that this is just our program; it doesn't include the college costs. About two and a half million dollars of this is for wage subsidies.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Mr. McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. The Apprenticeship Program I still think is probably the best in the country and the more money we can put into it, especially with all the developments coming down, I think is a good thing. Am I allowed to ask questions on 8-29?

Yes, you may, Mr. McLeod.

Thank you very much, Mr. Pokiak. The oil and gas industry contribution, $763,000, is that earmarked for certain groups already? I heard you mention Community Futures. Does some of the money go to the Aboriginal Futures? Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. When I said Community Futures, I misspoke. There is no money to Community Futures, it's to Aboriginal Futures, and then there are a number of other bodies, as well, that run training programs jointly with us that we have funded as well.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Mr. McLeod.

Thank you and thanks to the Minister for clarifying that, because I was wondering about the Community Futures answer to one of the questions before. So this is applicant-based. Does the Aboriginal Futures get a set amount every year that they apply for? I'm pretty sure they administer the fund, they take the applications, they approve the applications. Does the department have any input into the applications that come in? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think we should also say that the GNWT contribution is probably the smallest part of the contributions to Aboriginal Futures, the largest being the federal government. Aboriginal governments and the GNWT all contribute to it. Our involvement is we have one member who sits on the board.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Mr. McLeod. Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Mr. Ramsay.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I wanted to pick up where my colleague Mr. Hawkins was talking about the need for a dedicated campus of Aurora College here in Yellowknife and I just wanted to take that one step further. I just want to know, and I know the Minister has spoken about the planning and they're trying to understand how it's going to happen, but it's not in the capital plan anywhere in future years. I just want to reiterate how important a campus, a stand-alone campus, would be to Yellowknife. Mr. Chairman, I'm not an expert in advanced education or how it would work, but the North is maturing and maybe it's time we looked at the establishment of a university, a degree-granting, full-fledged university here in Yellowknife. This new campus could be the forerunner to a university, a university of the North. I really think the government has to give that some thought, and I'd like to get the Minister's comments on that. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. There's no argument from me that we need to do something with the Yellowknife Campus. We know that the Yellowknife Facilities Committee, or the report showed that they're already leasing more than half their space off campus now that they're using. So it makes sense to take a look at doing something to ensure that we have the space for the courses that are being offered.

The Facilities Committee identified three potential solutions to the space issue, and I'm hoping to have the next step in place, as I said, by June in order to identify a definite solution and then move forward with a proposal to get that into the facilities acquisition plan. Thanks, Mr. Chairman.

Thanks, Mr. Dent. Mr. Ramsay.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'm just wondering if the Minister could comment on what the genesis would be from transitioning from a college to a university and granting four-year degrees. I know the Nursing Program is now a four-year degree program and we're starting to take steps towards that. I'm just wondering if the department has any plans or a vision for the future when it comes to a degree-granting institution like a university would be. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It's probably a long road that we would have to go down before we would get to seeing a university in the Northwest Territories. When you look at something like the University of Alberta, it's got more students than the Northwest Territories has residents. Even its smaller campus, the one in Camrose, has a huge number of students in comparison to what our population is, even. So we probably have a long way to go, given the costs of running a full-fledged university, but we have explored with two courses, as the Member pointed out, the Bachelor of Education and the Bachelor of Science program for nursing, various ways of granting degrees. I would think that would be a much preferred way to go in the near term; to look at how we might partner with other educational institutions, universities, to deliver the full four years in the North where we can and where it makes economic sense.

One thing that I have also discussed with my colleagues from the Yukon and Nunavut was a joint approach to a university. Looking at the population of all three territories, it's pretty tough with even 70,000 people to justify supporting a university. But I thought that it might make some sense for us to look at what we could do on a

joint approach, dividing up our specialties among the three different territories perhaps, and then knowing how much money is spent on research in the North and how much of that money is provided to university chairs by the Government of Canada, I thought that that might be an approach that we could take a look at. So there has been some interest expressed by the Minister from Nunavut. It's a new Minister from the Yukon since I last broached this subject, so I need to again talk to the Minister from Yukon. Unfortunately, the new Minister didn't attend...or I didn't have a chance to talk to the Minister. It was Nunavut that didn't attend that last meeting. But we haven't had a chance for the three of us to get together and try and move this forward, although there was at one point some interest from my two colleagues.