Human Resources committee  Again, sometimes it's not all about money, it's match. What we heard was about the need to work with the business community, the individuals, and the community as a whole, to figure out what the trades and the jobs are and then match that funding. For example, don't have a whole

Human Resources committee  It's not totally by us. There are other corporate partners who fund—

Human Resources committee  Yes. Actually I do have some information, and I'd be happy to give you that.

Human Resources committee  We didn't get into the big details around the curriculum. What I can share with you are the comments we heard from business, and also again some of the municipal leaders, around the curriculum. There were a couple of things. One is about curriculum that relates to people and wher

Human Resources committee  If I may just add something, GE supports an organization called Actua. Their offices are here in Ottawa. They have a special program for first nations, and last year it supported 20,000 students. They deliver programs in science and technology for 9- to 15-year-olds. The whole pu

Human Resources committee  Certainly, the first one—and we heard this right across the board, and I think Ross mentioned this as well—is streamlining approval processes. We heard from so many people who felt they were ready to go, and now there's another layer of approval. One person shared with us that af

Human Resources committee  Yes, or it was hard to find. If you come back to skills, a number of members who were in municipal government said to us that they have people on their staff. When they look for information and data, it's often difficult for people to find who even has a degree in this stuff. If

Human Resources committee  What we've started doing is—and we're in our third year—we've switched our GE scholarship program and now it is focused on aboriginals only. For university students in year two going through to the end, we have funding that's made available in each of their years—so year two, thr

Human Resources committee  Absolutely, and that's the whole point, to have role models as well.

Human Resources committee  We talked at length with the community about the dropout rates and why they were so high. There were a couple of things that were explained to us. One was the legacy of residential schools. Parents right now tend not to encourage their children to go to school. If kids are feelin

Human Resources committee  Yes, definitely. We did hear a little bit about that, not so much around the funding in a big way, but the real need to have this kind of initiative. What a number of people told us as well is that the transition is almost a one-year transition. So people coming from northern com

Human Resources committee  In terms of barriers, there are a couple of things that were expressed. One is that the population of the communities is so low that it doesn't make economic sense for companies to build a robust, broadband infrastructure. That was something that was expressed in the round tables

Human Resources committee  I can answer some of that based on the survey results. Quite a number of the people we spoke to were in the mining industry. They noted several things. There are a lot of mines that will be opening in Canada. There is a lot of foreign investment for mining, and then there's the

Human Resources committee  Absolutely. That's a very good point. When we started with the survey as GE, we wanted to stay in the area we felt we knew, which was the business community and the business lens. There isn't really a lot of available current literature, so that's where we focused. Of course, as

Human Resources committee  Thank you very much. Thank you to the members of the committee for the opportunity to present. I am going to start, and then my colleague, Ross Hornby, will complete. In January 2011, GE Canada launched a partnership with the Canadian Chamber of Commerce focusing on Canada's re