Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just have a question and it's probably along the same lines as what Mr. Braden was talking about, but more in reference to tradespeople in the NWT. I know that many of our tradespeople that get certified and out of the trades here in the NWT are a result of not the government pushing them through the trades schools, but more private companies or maybe they are LHOs who devote a lot of time and energy and don't receive any government funding even on the LHO level to do any sort of training initiatives for even administration, let alone apprentices. Only to have the government recruit them after they have reached their certification and then they go and work for the government after they are done, for a better wage than what a private company or even an LHO or local board can afford with the budgets that they have.
I am not sure how to address through Human Resources, but that kind of a retention issue to me is serious at the local level, because I have LHOs now that really don't want to devote any time and energy into hiring apprentices and pushing them through the four years in school all the time. It's a lot of work to keep track of their hours and filing it with Human Resources Canada. This alleviates a lot of time for the Government of the NWT. At the end of the day when they recruit them, they have saved all that recruitment time and money and it leaves the LHOs just hanging there with nobody to handle the trades or the businesses that are just left empty handed with no compensation package or training remuneration package. I am not sure how to address that kind of human resource strategy, but to me it doesn't seem like it is the
way it should be going. We should encourage, definitely, local businesses and private industry to train and take on apprentices in the trades area, but we can't just turn around and recruit them for the government's use, or under use is what I like to call it.
I just want to ask the Minister if the Human Resources department with this labour relations department, I guess or maybe the organizational development department would have any models or any consideration for how they can provide training dollars to local businesses either through a remuneration package or compensation package or a training package. Even at the LHO level, there is not one nickel of training you can get out of the government for apprentices. Have they put any thought into how they can...I don't want to downplay the whole issue of training and apprentices. I know it's a big initiative now with the GNWT again, but how can they work with local boards and agencies, even DEAs, to maybe devolve some resources, money, human resource expertise into how they can try to retain those people that they train? How can we share those resources? Thank you.