Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions now are for the Minister of Human Resources. Yesterday I talked about position growth in the GNWT and the fact that the Government of the Northwest Territories today does not have a comprehensive human resource strategy for the future. I find this amazing given the fact that we're settling land claims, we're going into implementation processes on land claims. The political landscape is going to change here, make no mistake about it. I think we should be working with aboriginal groups, we should be working with the UNW to come up with a strategy and a game plan to address the changing needs of our residents here in the Northwest Territories. I'd like to ask the Minister of HR, when can a process like this start? It should have started a number of years ago. When will this get started? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. The honourable Minister responsible for Human Resources, Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. At the negotiations tables, the self-government tables, the structure of governance after self-government entities draw down their powers is a topic of discussion. HR is involved in those discussions in conjunction with Aboriginal Affairs and other departments at the table.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Supplementary, Mr. Ramsay.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The government talks about capacity building at the community level and the numbers are here. They're broken down by regions in terms of job growth. How many of those 1,600 jobs actually went to small communities who have needs, who need front-line workers? Most of these jobs end up in Yellowknife or in the regional centres, Mr. Speaker. I'd like to ask the Minister responsible for Human Resources if he can break down the number of 1,608 new positions that were created by the government in the past seven years. Where exactly did these jobs go and to which communities? I don't want to know regions, I want to know which communities they went into. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I don't have with me that level of detail, but there are a number of examples. A lot of the examples include the health clinics in Lutselk'e, Fort Resolution, the ferry workers in Fort Simpson. So a lot of the situations are people in the communities. In Health and Social Services a lot of the growth was in nurses in communities across the Territories. I think the information has already been provided to committee, but I'll see what other information I can provide. But I don't have any further detail in the House, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Final supplementary, Mr. Ramsay.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yesterday we had a discussion regarding the economy and how important it is when you add jobs or look at new positions, front-line workers, how important a job is in a small community. The information that we got from the department thus far would show regional distribution of these new positions. I want to know how many jobs are going into every community in the Northwest Territories and if the Minister could provide that to this House. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I will take a look at what information we can put together from across government and see what I can provide.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Oral questions. The honourable Member for Hay River South, Mrs. Groenewegen.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, on this issue again of resource revenue sharing and devolution, it is difficult to know how to approach it. I really hope our constituents out there understand what drives this discussion and why it is so important. The Premier talked about royalties of $10 million 20 years ago coming out of the North. They didn't want to talk to us about resource revenue sharing then. Now that it's up to $224 million, what would make us think they'd want to talk about it more? In some ways, Mr. Speaker, it's like the ultimate abusive relationship. You know? We try to be nice. We go down to Ottawa. They say they really like us.

We come back to the House. We're afraid to say anything against them. We are working very hard, as the other Members pointed out, to do things to accommodate industry and invite companies into the North to exploit our resources so that the money can continue to flow to Ottawa in the form of royalties, and they just keep saying we'll talk to you about this later. It's premature. We don't want to talk to you about it now. So we don't know whether to take a hard line or a soft line or any line, or if we should just bury our heads in the sand and watch the development come through here. But we are sending a lot of money to accommodate development. We're spending a lot of money that could be spent on other things to accommodate development.

So I guess it's a frustrating thing and we talked about it yesterday and what can we do to get their attention on this. As there is a federal election campaign coming up, this should be an issue that is at the top of somebody's agenda. This should be at the top of a national party's agenda. I'd like to ask the Premier if he would commit to making sure that every leader of every political party in this country is keenly aware of what we're facing here. Thank you.

Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. The honourable Premier, Mr. Handley.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. You know, we started talking, as a government, starting talking about devolution probably in the late 1980s at the time when our government created the Department of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources and hired a deputy minister for this new department because we were all excited that we were going to get devolution at that time. Things didn't quite unfold the way they should be. We worked on it, but it wasn't as critical to us because the revenue was small and so on. But now it's critical for us. It is really critical for us. Mr. Speaker, we have to get beyond words. I know political leader in Ottawa after political leader has talked about treating all Canadians equally throughout the country, that we should get the primary share and so on, but we have to get beyond that. So, Mr. Speaker, it's my intention that we turn up the heat a bit and start asking for some specific time frames on things. What are you going to do? We don't need to just hear the nice messages. But we need to know that a time frame to get an AIP in place isn't my timetable. We've got to put timetables on things. We've got to talk specifics of what we're doing. To answer the question that the Member asked, yes, I will raise that with all the political leaders. We have to do something here. We can't just keep saying nice things. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Handley. Supplementary, Mrs. Groenewegen. Thank you, Mr. Handley. Oral questions. The honourable Member for Yellowknife Centre, Mr. Hawkins.

Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. The honourable Minister responsible for Industry, Tourism and Investment, Mr. Bell.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There are opportunities for all northerners in the MGP as there are in the mines. I think the challenge and the problem and the concern has been the barriers that exist for getting women into trades and getting them into the training required to work in these kinds of environments. I think we need to do a better job as a society generally in encouraging young women to move this way and to look at these careers as viable options. We're getting better and a Member earlier in one of the statements pointed out and talked about the number of doctors and lawyers who are women today. In fact, I believe I have read that there are more women entering medical school than men today, Mr. Speaker. So we have a lot of work to do, but that's the most important thing we can do. The opportunities will be there for everybody. We've got to remove barriers and I believe we need to do a better job of that. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Bell. Supplementary, Mr. Hawkins.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. With that said, then, how does the Mackenzie gas project SEA compare to the other socio-economic agreements the GNWT is party to in terms of recruitment and training geared towards women to break down those barriers to get them into skill trade opportunities such as the ones that will grow during the Mackenzie gas project? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. Mr. Bell.

Mr. Speaker, targets or predictions about the number of women that would be hired at a jobsite are essentially irrelevant if we don't have women accessing the training and being eligible for the jobs. That's where we need to focus our efforts. We've got a $20 million training fund that we've negotiated. We can be involved in setting the policy objectives as a government and making sure that the training is tailored toward removing barriers and making sure that we have more women interested and eligible for accessing those jobs. The future of jobs in the Northwest Territories, a large percentage proportion of those jobs will be in the natural resources sector. We've got to do a better job, I think, and our policies and objectives need to be reflected in our training and programming. I think we can do that, but we've got to set our minds to it. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Bell. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Hawkins.