Human Resources committee  Certainly there's our partner, AREVA Canada. And we've gone into the oil field, oil sector, to look at Suncor, Shell. With our ASEP program, Shell was actually a partner in that process. De Beers has done some good things in the Xstrata Raglan mine in northern Quebec as well. The

Human Resources committee  Yes, it's within the trades. You're seeing tradespeople out-earn professional training by a significant margin, because they start to earn earlier. Their training is on-the-job, so sometimes they get a salary during that time. There are a lot of opportunities in that area, especi

Human Resources committee  We take a bit of a pipeline approach to our education training programs within Cameco. I think one of the best practices revolves around that approach, in that we look at what some of the needs are in the high school system and we try to support it. Some of them are traditional,

Human Resources committee  Yes.

Human Resources committee  The apprenticeship issue is a good one. Northern Alberta had a good pilot for that, where they tried to do a three-to-one journeyman-to-apprentice pilot. A lot of jurisdictions have a one-to-one system and that can plug up or bottleneck the system a bit.

Human Resources committee  Yes. In the post-secondary program you're not allowed to really invest in the upgrading piece. The technical programs do, but they come in waves, and they're inconsistent, so in getting any type of momentum in tackling the adult education issues, the gaps in the northern communit

Human Resources committee  Yes, there are various networks. There's the Conference Board, the Canadian Council for Aboriginal Business, the Canada West Foundation, and those types of things. There's a sharing of best practices, and we do stay in touch. We share a lot of what we do, and we learn from others

Human Resources committee  Yes, throughout Saskatchewan, not just in the north.

Human Resources committee  Let me put it this way. There are 40,000 in the north. Some 50% of them are under the age of 18, so that leaves 20,000. And 50% of them don't have grade 12, so that leaves 10,000. There are currently about 9,000 employed; that leaves 1,000 for us to go after who have grade 12. An

Human Resources committee  I'll just make a comment there. We do have quite a few women in our training programs from underground mining: heavy equipment operators, truck drivers. They're really breaking the mould by entering these jobs, which were male-dominated in the past. With respect to the day care

Human Resources committee  Some of the schools are pretty innovative. I've heard discussion of going to a three-semester system, so you would have September to January, January to April or May, and then a summer one. The loss of time, by having that summer break, can compound some of the second-language is

Human Resources committee  I agree with that. Of the 1,600 employees we got from northern Saskatchewan, only a handful have left. They prefer to stay in their home communities.

Human Resources committee  That's a tough question, certainly controversial in recent political debate across this country. We're confronted as a corporation with the funding challenges that the schools have. Certainly comparability in funding is probably the biggest issue. Now, outside of that is the re

Human Resources committee  Thank you. There are always going to be challenges between the speed of government and the speed of business in how things get done. The closer the alignment we can get there--that's critical. That's one point. The second point is I think the initiatives need to be looked at a lo

Human Resources committee  Each region is different, but certainly right now in remote Canada, northern Canada, there is a great deal of opportunity, and I think a “made in northern Canada” strategy is absolutely critical. That can address some of the K-to-12 issues and certainly the skills training progra