Thank you, Madam Speaker. It's good to see you in the big chair today. I hope you can keep this unruly bunch in line. Madam Speaker, the first week of November is National Skilled Trades and Technology Week, and I would like to congratulate all of our new journeypersons and top-mark earners. My colleagues and I have spoken at length about the need to increase the amount of tradespeople in the North, and I know it's a shared priority both for the Minister and all my colleagues in this House.

However, the numbers are not just low in the Northwest Territories. There's a trade shortage across Canada, Madam Speaker. As caucus, we got to tour the Aurora College trade shop in Fort Smith, and I believe our transformation to a polytechnic gives us a unique opportunity to build on many of the existing successes in our trades programs. The reality is: the trades don't attract as many people as they used to, and even people in the system, many apprentices, are looking to other career options these days, Madam Speaker.

COVID has given us an opportunity. It has changed the way we deliver our education system, and it must change the way we deliver our trades training. We have a chance to re-imagine what trades training looks like. Are there no journeypersons in your community? Why don't we get a mobile trades program where we fly instructors out to provide six months' training programs in each region, or why don't we develop a distance mentorship program and put much more of our trades programming online?

Madam Speaker, if our young people don't see why the trades are valuable, we need to make sure that our high school curriculum focuses on northern problems. There are many climate-aware students, and as we work on our GNWT good building practices, possibly a northern building code, building, retrofits, there's an entire world of northern specialization in the trades that we need to speak.

I believe, Madam Speaker, we need to look at developing northern-specific trade curriculum. Right now, we use the Alberta curriculum, and we largely just copy and paste it. As a result of it, some of the very unique building features of the North and some of the things we need to prioritize such as adapting to climate change are not front and centre in our trades programs. I believe, in the transformation to a polytechnic, we can build northern curriculum which will inspire our students to take them but will also attract other tradespeople who want to come here and become northern building specialists.

Madam Speaker, we are still struggling to attract and retain women in the trades. We must prioritize hiring female instructors to provide a lasting impression on young apprentices. We must expand trades education to address the root social issues that are keeping women out.

Madam Speaker, we are struggling to get many of our apprentices to school, but I believe with a new look and the tools of online learning, we can increase the people entering the trades and our number of journey person's graduating. Thank you, Madam Speaker.