Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Braden mentioned teachers and nurses. We also have a
similar promise to social workers. We have the Intern Program which also is an extra 35 grads in other areas of study. So the government does have a fair investment in recent grads in helping them get their first job.
In terms of teachers, there has been a drop over the past three years in the number of teachers who have been coming out of the program and finding employment in the North. The two Yellowknife boards tend to get the most applicants but can't take them all. The commitment we have made, as a government, is that the offer will be made of a position somewhere in the Northwest Territories. What we are finding is that many of our grads are not anxious to return to some of the smaller communities, which is where a large number of the jobs are. The two or three boards in Yellowknife can't take all of the grads that we are getting out of the program. So people are going to have to recognize that the guarantee of a job won't necessarily be in one of the larger communities; it may require working in one of our smaller communities.