Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I had some questions in the House yesterday in regard to some human resources issues. I just wanted to bring to

attention today there was a Minister’s statement or a Minister’s news release on October 13, 2013, that mentioned the Regional Recruitment Program. I’ve made reference to it calling it the 80/20 program, where the residents of the NWT who actually try to get into the GNWT workforce get paid 80 percent of their salary and 20 percent of that overall salary goes into training.

I want to ask the Minister of Human Resources some questions later on the implementation of this program because in the press release it did state that the program would be implemented before the end of this calendar year and that was in 2013. He was hoping that trainees are anticipated to be on the job in early 2014. Obviously, we’re in the third month right now of 2014, I want to see how that’s going.

He also mentioned that this program would help reduce barriers of entering into the workforce where individuals who go into the job would do training on the job. I brought up concerns yesterday in regard to individuals trying to get into the workforce and actually not being able to get in because they have to look for a Commissioner for Oaths to sign something, or else also looking at trying to get a criminal records check or some other things that can happen to them.

This Regional Recruitment Program is a great program. I want to get an update on that and I want people of the Northwest Territories to know that this program is supposed to be in place and we’re supposed to get some residents into the workforce this year. I will be asking the Minister, later on today, how this program is coming and whether or not we’re actually having a perfect program here to get residents of the Northwest Territories into these jobs that are vacant. Thank you.