We’ve been very fortunate through the Rural and Remote Communities committee that they’ve identified some money for apprentices and we’ve been able to take some on and we’ve been able to retain them and add more on.

I take the Member’s point that as far as using able-bodied people in the communities. In some communities the LHOs have been very good at putting a lot of people in the community to work. You hear some cases where they’ve used them to maybe take apart an old building. I will commit to the Member that I’ll have discussions with my colleague, the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment, to explore possible ways that we can use the money that was identified through training, the $925,000 that the Member mentions. We’d be more than happy to use some of that money if we were able to bring on more apprentices and offer more training in the communities.

I see that throughout my travels in some of the communities where they do a lot of the local maintenance work themselves, the local renovation work themselves, and they bring on a lot of people

from in the communities. I know one community in particular had brought in a drywaller to teach some local people how to do the proper taping and painting. There are those opportunities, and I will commit that as a corporation, working in conjunction with ECE, we’ll explore all the possibilities we can to make sure we get a lot of our... I agree with the Member that we need to get our able-bodied people in the communities to work and if there are opportunities for us take a lead in that, then I’ll commit to that.