Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to the witnesses.
I'm going to take my seven minutes probably to speak mostly with you, Mr. Thompson. I appreciate your words today, and I'm going to try to go a little bit more into the specifics because I feel, respectfully, that you understated the important role that you do play in northern regions. It's just an amazing job, not just coordinating with other departments like INAC and, in my case, coming from the great Kenora riding, FedNor. HRSDC has to always have its finger on the pulse of what's happening with respect to the activities of other departments, but growth and diversification within the economies in those regions.... In the great Kenora riding we have 25 isolated communities, and we've come to understand, particularly quite recently, that priorities moving forward with respect to first nations communities deal with making sure they have the skills capacity to complete significant projects going on in their communities. So now through SLAAMB, which you may very well be aware of, out of Sioux Lookout, there is a great opportunity to account and reconcile for decades of carpentry work done by first nations in their own communities and actually get important tickets for that. I applaud HRSDC's role in that.
Furthermore, there was a recent announcement through the community adjustment fund in Pikangikum, where we're setting up classrooms and training people, with partnerships in a regional college, in an effort to ensure they have the best chance at full participation in an extraordinary forestry initiative that is indeed, beyond harvesting and diversification, into value-added deals with forestry management, tourism, and wardenship of historical lands, not just for the nations, but that contain a lot of important information as to the history of that forest in northwestern Ontario.
So with that as a preamble, and recognizing the important social and labour market investments that you make, and by way of example in the great Kenora riding, we're focusing, as the chair pointed out earlier, on economic development in the north. And I always qualify that. My riding is also on the shores of Hudsons Bay, very much north but within another jurisdiction.
I would like it if you could describe in a little bit more detail how you have been and will continue to be that focal point for coordinating and responding to the role of other departments. I know, like in my riding and the territories, you are interested in the skills development not just for first nations people but for another catchment or constituent as well. How will you continue to play an important coordinating role with other departments in some of these initiatives? And take the time as well to refer, if you would like, to specific first nations skills and employment partnership programs that you have in mind.
Thank you.