Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, we all have things that keep us up at night, and this is one of mine.
Mr. Chair, we are at an exciting crossroads as far as the Northwest Territories is concerned. We are definitely at a -- as the Member reflected on earlier, a different -- seeing diamond mines close at a different pace than what we had anticipated. We are also acknowledging that we need to maintain that workforce of northern workers in order to be able to capture the opportunity that we see coming toward us. And so that is making sure that people have employment to go straight into so that we don't lose anybody but also at the same time making sure that we are doing the training and workforce development that we need at the same time.
To the Member's question of what am I doing, I am constantly talking to industry about what their needs are and constantly -- because part of this is not just, you know, the DND opportunities the Member is talking about or the infrastructure development, but there's also still major advancements in critical mineral mines that are happening in this territory, and we still want to see the fruition of those opportunities come to the North and come to Northerners and so still working hard alongside those proponents. And so I am constantly asking them for their workforce development plans and timelines because I want to be able to provide that to regional high schools, career education advisors, and to the career development officers and the business development officers that are in those regions so that they can speak to people very specifically about what opportunities are coming and when. So if we know, for example, that we're going to need five electricians, who wants to be an electrician? If we know, for example, that we need environmental technicians, who wants to do these roles? Because when I talk to kids these days, they want to have meaningful employment but might not necessarily know exactly what they want to do. They might know they want to be involved in an arts. They might know they want to run their own business. They might know they want to work at the mines. But they want to know what those opportunities look like, and this is how we tell them that.
The other side of this, Mr. Chair, is having conversations with the federal government around the procurement needs of this territory.
So the federal government put out a web page advising people to kind of get their criminal record checks done or their security clearances done in anticipation for some of this work. And just an example of that, of something that I've communicated to some of our federal partners, is that we need to ensure that all Northerners have space for employment in these opportunities. Some Northerners are ready and some Northerners are, you know, ready but need training opportunities that are very specific to certain roles. And some Northerners have training, but might also be carrying with them, you know, a minor infraction from 30 years ago that landed them a criminal record and that might mean that, for example, they won't get a security clearance to clear brush on a site that is being prepared for a DND project. And we need to make sure that there are tiered levels of security that make these projects accessible to all Northerners because we want to make sure that from one NWT border to the other that if somebody wants access to an opportunity, we're working together to create it for them. Thank you.
