Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to all the presenters here today for some very interesting topics.
My first question is to the Chartered Professionals in Human Resources. I appreciated very much your presentation flagging the different areas that need consideration and further investment in the area of human capital. It's something that I, as a member of Parliament and in other capacities in my life, really put a lot of energy on, because I think it's the way forward for many people in the north.
I represent the Northwest Territories. In the north, it's something that we really need. I represent a riding that is over half indigenous, so we have a lot of challenges in many different areas, and we talk about education as being our way forward, and investing in human capital. We talk about it in the same breath.
Of course, we have now many indigenous governments that are being formed and taking control of their destiny. They are also looking at investing in education and human capital, but we're finding that investing in post-secondary or traditional types of training doesn't work as well as it might because of the many challenges that are still in our communities, where a large number of people are still struggling with addictions. We have a cultural disconnect with some of our practices. We have the residential school legacy, and our elders still strongly promote that our young people try to live their traditional life and know the skills of living on the land.
Many of the indigenous governments focused on post-secondary education. Now they're starting to realize that we have to start as soon as the young girls are pregnant or they're going to be living a lifestyle that is not going to allow the baby to be healthy. We have to focus on the young people. It's a different path that the indigenous people have to focus on to try to get our young people into the world where they can deal with the new lifestyle that is out there for them.
I heard you talk about indigenous Canadians and about training for them. I was just wondering if you can talk a little bit about what you see and if there's anything different that is being targeted to this population of people.