Thank you, Mr. Chair. We had a vigorous round of discussion around this issue of a knowledge economy, and we, all the honourable Members, felt that this was an effective way to start addressing some of these issues.

The rule of thumb, I guess, in the world has been that manufacturing and industry follows low-cost labour, and we are seeing that trend reverse. The knowledge economies are becoming the driver of production in the world, and actually, highly-skilled workers are slowly returning manufacturing back to countries that are developing knowledge economies.

Canada is well-positioned to make use of that. The federal government has recognized this and is investing millions of dollars in developing knowledge economy and moving Canada away from its traditional bread-and-butter economic drivers being the resource industry. I have spoken about this in this Chamber before, and the City of Calgary is a perfect example of a local economy built on the strength of resource development that has diversified using its knowledge clusters, the university, centres for excellence and innovation, and now 40 per cent of its workforce is employed in the creative industry.

What does that mean for the North? We have other challenges. We have a significantly smaller population. We have limited access to post-secondary institutions and other centres of innovation and excellence. We have to start a plan to develop those so that we do not get outpaced when southern Canada starts shifting towards this as well. There is always going to be a place for the resource economy and resource development in the Northwest Territories. We need it to fuel these other innovations, but if we fail to diversify towards a knowledge economy, we are missing the boat on where the direction of this country and the entire world is heading. We cannot be left out by this.

That means a complete rethinking of our labour market. It means investing in information and computer technology jobs and opportunities to grow them, and it means building a plan that will develop centres for excellence, identifying knowledge clusters, and developing those resources so that we can make use of where the knowledge economy is growing and how it works.

There is a lot of work to be done on this. It can be a complicated and often confusing issue. This motion puts in our mandate the foundation for building a knowledge economy plan that will grow over time so that we keep pace with these developments that are happening all over the world and in Canada. It will also better position us to access those federal funds that are flowing from Ottawa to support the growth of this industry. Thank you, Mr. Chair.