Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Certainly, when you have 3,000 migrant workers working in the Northwest Territories and people in small communities aren’t being employed, you have to start asking some questions. I’m glad the Member brought that issue up today, because I really do believe that we need to get more people working. If you get a training program where there are 24 individuals from a community and 12 of them fail a drug test, that certainly is an issue and it’s something that we have to pay attention to.
Training programs that are being put together, and I look at what is happening in the Sahtu – and the Norman Wells Land Corp has put together a training program run this past summer and it will be run again next summer – it’s important that basic life skills are taught to the younger people that want to be employed, in this case, with the oil and gas development in the Sahtu. The same can be said for mining. People have to learn that when the alarm clock goes off, you get out of bed and you go to work. You collect your paycheque and you keep working. Those types of basic life skills have to be ingrained in young people across the territory.
We continue to work with industry to find ways that that type of training can get out there and have a meaningful impact on our economy, and allow people in our small communities and across the territory to be gainfully employed.