Thank you, Mr. Testart.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I am satisfied that the BDIC will have the resources they need to continue to do its work, but it strikes me as odd that we have done two years of cuts now to BDIC without a program review and without passing legislation to allow them to do things. It just seems like the cuts are coming ahead of other work that needs to get done, and the Minister is, in fact, relying on these program reviews and legislation in order to continue to support the operations of BDIC.

It just seems odd that, again, we are cutting first and fixing the cuts afterwards. It seems like those things should have been done first, but we will see where this goes. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Testart. Next, I have Mr. Blake.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just a couple of questions here under the fur program: in my riding, we are seeing more and more young trappers getting out on the land here, and I know that there was a concern this fall that we did have a trapping workshop held in one of the communities but with limited amount of space available.

I think that would be a big benefit, if we had at least two of these workshops in each community that is interested. It would be beneficial in the future. There is a lot of interest in trapping. We have good examples in both Aklavik and Fort McPherson. We have a lot of youth who are finished school and are going out trapping and making a living here, and we need to encourage that and have more workshops available to them. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you. Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. As I have stated before, our fur program is for the Mackenzie Valley Fur Program for marketing and promotion, and I believe those questions would probably be better directed to the Minister of Environment and Natural Resources when he comes up. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Minister. Mr. Blake.

Well, I think it is kind of shared between the two departments, because I know, under the Mackenzie Valley Fur initiative, that they do take trappers down, whether it's to North Bay or other auctions throughout Canada. This is all a part of it, encouraging more trappers. There is huge demand out there. This fall, there was an ad out for 20,000 muskrats. It is pretty tough to get up in our area at the moment because of population, but I think it is a responsibility between both departments. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you. Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. As I have said, we are in charge of the marketing and promotion of this, but we can certainly have a discussion with the Minister of ENR, working cohesively together to be able to help the trappers in the best way that we can to support them marketing and selling their furs. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Minister. Mr. Blake.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Under "commercial fisheries," is this available to, say, folks up in the Beaufort Delta region, or is this specific only to Yellowknife and Hay River? Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you. Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I believe he is talking about the line item on page 216 for commercial fisheries, and that is a support program that we have there for freight and production costs of fishing in the Northwest Territories. I know our department has been up to the Member's region and had a workshop there to see who was interested in getting into the commercial fishery in that region. We had a number of stakeholders participate in that.

I have recently had a chat with the chief of Tsiigehtchic, actually, around the discussion of how we can continue to promote that. We will continue to work towards that initiative going forward. I'd gladly sit down with the Member any time he wants and see how we can support the commercial fishery in his region. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you. Minister. The Member's question was: the money under that line item, is that available to people from his region? Thank you. Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chair, although I think that's the point I was trying to make. There's no commercial fishing that has been done in that region yet, but, if it was, that money would be there for them. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you. Nothing further from Mr. Blake. I see no further comments on this. Everyone in the committee spoke on the activity once. Everyone has spoken to this activity. I will call this activity. Economic diversification and business support, operations expenditures summary, $17,313,000. Does committee agree?

Thank you, committee. Next, mineral and petroleum resources. This is found on pages 219 to 222, with the expenditure summary on page 220. First, I have Mr. Vanthuyne.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. A while ago, I was talking to some representatives from maybe even the Minister. I might have brought it up during business planning, a program that I was getting fairly excited about. It was called geoscience field assistant. I believe that was the name of it. It was a program that was being proposed by Aurora College. It was proposed by Aurora College along with the department and Mine Training Society and industry, in fact. We're all going to be collaborators on this program. This would be a program that would be part education and in part field training.

I'm wondering if the department has any information that they could fill us in on with regard to that program. I understood it was something that we were going to try to promote and undertake this year. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you. Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. To update the Member, I believe Aurora College and the Mine Training Society hope to deliver this program in the spring. That's going to be moving forward. I think there have been a number of sponsors who are willing to take part in this going forward. Hopefully, we are going to have a number of students enrolled in this thing going forward. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Minister. Mr. Vanthuyne.

That's good. It seems like we're going to be moving forward with the program. I just want to confirm, though. Has uptake on enrolment been positive, and are we in fact going to have students who are going to enroll at Aurora College for the program and then go on to take the hands-on practicum piece in the field later on? I just want to confirm that we actually are going to roll that out this year. Thank you, Mr. Chair.