Both for sure. I will say next time you come to Yukon, make sure you come up to Dawson City. It's my riding, so I believe that it's the true heart and soul of Yukon. Next time, make sure you let me know when you're in town.
You hit the nail on the head. Boom does turn to bust in the mining industry. In my riding, being Klondike, we lived through that. The first nations, the Tr'ondëk Hwëch'in of that area have been living alongside the mining community for over 100 years. Part of the reason it's such an effective community is because of the Athabascan principles of sharing and getting along with the folks who live in this community.
We have an ability to sit down at the table, government to government, Yukoner to Yukoner, and discuss when boom turns to bust. The best thing that we can do is make sure that when we're training our citizens, when we're training our students, when we start looking at how we're going to fill those jobs, we have to make sure that we take a focused lens on technologies and trades that aren't specific just to the industries in our backyard.
When things are going well and when the jobs are in the backyard, then we'll have folks not just with air brake licences but with actual red seal certifications in trades, and also the ability, when boom turns to bust, to be able to go and participate in the rest of Canada and be competitive. We need to do a better job in our school system, in my opinion, to focus on technology and trades, and have dual credits so that if you're going towards a certain direction in a certain trade and you change your mind—because you're young and you do that when you're young—that's not going to affect your ability to graduate from high school and to move on into another area. Again, it's about that diversification of the industry.
One of the best things that we can do in the mining sector is put a lot more attention towards working with first nations governments and the economic development branches therein on reclamation. If you take a look at all the economic development branches that are represented by the different first nations governments in Yukon, there are hundreds of millions of dollars of potential development in this industry waiting to happen. When you're mining, it's nice to have Yukoners in those jobs. The more we keep that money local, the more it affects our GDP in a positive way. When boom turns to bust, we have to make sure that in the reclamation industry, we're also leading the way with local solutions.