Basically to visitors is where I'm coming from.
Evidence of meeting #38 for Indigenous and Northern Affairs in the 40th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was nwt.
Evidence of meeting #38 for Indigenous and Northern Affairs in the 40th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was nwt.
6:50 p.m.
Conservative
6:50 p.m.
Manager, Community Programs, Northwest Territories Arts Council
Right. What I don't think I articulated very well in the presentation was that there is a real lack of infrastructure for the arts in the Northwest Territories. It's not just facilities like galleries or theatres, but it's also human infrastructure in terms of the administrative capacity. Any one artist may have ambitions to present their works to people, but in a coordinated way in any community it's a lot of effort that is heaped on the willing and the volunteers.
The arts council is trying through its work to support projects that might take hold in a tourism and economic development context, or even just for the social well-being of the community. They're very interested in that sort of whole round of community dynamics where arts is a critical part, but they don't have the answers about the tourism link.
6:55 p.m.
Conservative
Earl Dreeshen Conservative Red Deer, AB
Thank you.
My father-in-law was a hunter and trapper. He used to buy for the Edmonton fur auction in the early 1900s. I heard a lot of stories about hunting and trapping. Of course, trying to look now at the sorts of things that are taking place we look at the attitude perhaps of Europeans with respect to our fur industry.
Mr. Pokiak, are there things that we can be doing to help advocate on your behalf or are there things that you are doing to try to minimize some of the effects of some of these organizations that are taking your industry to task?
6:55 p.m.
Director, Tuktoyaktuk Hunters and Trappers Committee
Yes. The legholds are banned for marten. We have to use the quick-kill traps. I saw them when they first came out. I was out on the land with Billy Jacobson and my brother, James Pokiak, and they weren't quick-kill. So the change there was that they just wanted to improvise from the leghold.
It takes more time to set them because you carry more traps. Once a marten gets tangled up in one and freezes—and you leave your traps for no more than five days, but you might catch one right when you're leaving—the whole trap and animal has to come home and you have to carry extra. That costs in gas and things like that.
To me, trappers are a dying breed. It's hard to say, but it is true. There are a few people out there yet who want to make a living at it. For instance, the dog officer up there gets more for a dog that's killed than you get for fur. It's $40 for a fur-bearing animal. To kill a loose dog that's a nuisance, you get $75. Which way would you want to go?
6:55 p.m.
Conservative
6:55 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Bruce Stanton
I'll give you a little bit because everyone else was over just a touch, so just a short question.
6:55 p.m.
Conservative
Earl Dreeshen Conservative Red Deer, AB
Certainly.
To Mr. Blondin, I am also a school teacher, so I wanted to ask you, being a high school teacher in my past, what types of business training upgrades your college could be developing to help to specifically assist your students so that they can tie into some of the different trades and so on that are available.
6:55 p.m.
Director, Mine Training Society
I think that rather than just go out to certain professions, they have to understand that there are certain courses that they have to take to get them there. I think from a business point of view.... I also took management, and I've always said, if you don't know what to take when you go to school, take management, because you can become a manager of anything. If you specialize in something, you can go there, especially if you want to go into business. There are a lot of business opportunities, and some students are doing that. That's what I recommend.
Also, I think that you have to be open-minded in the way that wherever there are problems, there's a business opportunity. If people have concerns about the environment, then we have to start training people as researchers, because right now we're hiring consultants to do all our work for us. Why don't we do it ourselves? If you have problems in the area of social work or whatever, then what you do is...like trapping, for instance. If there are social problems, you have to get the students away from the alcohol and drugs and put them back on the land, culturally. There's a business opportunity to do that. There are a lot of people who are very good on the land, so why don't they start trekking on some of our unexplored rivers, and do that every summer? We get a lot of calls every summer for people to do exactly that.
So there are opportunities that people don't normally take. There are certainly opportunities where, if people put their minds to it, they could take advantage of them.
7 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Bruce Stanton
Thank you, Mr. Dreeshen.
Now we'll go to our second round, beginning with Mr. Russell.
7 p.m.
Liberal
Todd Russell Liberal Labrador, NL
Thank you, again, Mr. Chair.
This is for both of you involved with the MTS, the Mine Training Society. Can you give us a sense of the types of programs you've been able to facilitate through that initiative, and maybe some numbers? I guess the end result is employability, people going into the mining industry in one job or another. How has that been achieved, and what results are you getting? I think there have been probably some very good success stories associated with this initiative since 2004.
7 p.m.
General Manager, Mine Training Society
I'd be happy to answer that.
Since 2004 we have assessed 932 individuals, trained 632, and 500 of those got employment. The reason it is successful is, one, that it's a partnership approach between industry, aboriginal governments, and public government. It's one place were politics are dropped at the door and there's the focus and the mandate to get aboriginal people and northerners into long-term, sustainable employment.
Part of the success rate is because of the way we have incorporated tenets of the medicine wheel into our training. We deal with the learner as whole person, as opposed to just a brain that's learning some stuff. When we do our training we try to start it in the community, because people are in their comfort zone.
Our program for underground miners, which is the biggest need for the mining industry right now here in the north, has actually won a premier's award for collaboration and excellence. It's in three different phases. It starts in the community, and all the people there are introduced to the concept of mining. Some people have never seen mine equipment, but we bring in simulators to show that, and we talk about job-rating their skills, and we also do an introduction to underground mining.
Then we bring them into Yellowknife, and we always make sure that two people from one community come, so you have that safety guard right there with you. You have someone who has your common experience. We do training with our partners at Aurora College. We've had investment from the federal government in our program in buying a mine simulator. Aurora College is the only public institution that actually has a mine simulator where we can do safety training. It's like the things you'd use to teach pilots how to fly planes, but now we're teaching people how to drive haul trucks underneath the ground in a very safe environment.
7 p.m.
General Manager, Mine Training Society
Then we do hands-on training with haul trucks, and it's been a partnership all the way along. The mines themselves have actually put money into the simulator. The GNWT and INAC have invested in this thing. After that, the students go into a traineeship in which they can actually get skills, go to the mine, and develop their understanding. They're monitored and mentored the entire time.
It's gotten to the point that the trainees develop an attachment to it. They're coming back once they're employed and getting their families going. Every time someone has a baby, they're at our doorstep. First you tell the family, and then you go to tell the Mine Training Society. It's that ongoing mentorship. It's the attachment to people. You're mentoring and fostering all along. You're not babysitting, but you're giving that extra coaching and understanding. We're dealing with the mental, the physical, the spiritual, and the emotional. If one's out of balance, you're not going to learn. That's one of the reasons we've had success in our programs.
7:05 p.m.
Liberal
Todd Russell Liberal Labrador, NL
I had some involvement with a similar program in Labrador. We had ASEP funding as part of the Voisey's Bay initiative. But some of the things you talked about are unique. It's a holistic approach, and there's been a hell of a lot of work from that perspective back in Labrador.
Mr. Blondin, did you have something to add?
7:05 p.m.
Director, Mine Training Society
The communities here in the Northwest Territories are affected by the whole mining industry, and we will be for the next hundred years. Although we've just been in this program for the past nine years, we still see a lot of work ahead of us. I think we can succeed in getting more people trained and into jobs.
We have an extension to 2012, and we sincerely see the need for an extension of the program. It's been very successful, and we want to carry on.
7:05 p.m.
Conservative
John Duncan Conservative Vancouver Island North, BC
I'll stay on topic—the Mine Training Society. Our briefing note says that it's all about training for diamond mining jobs, but it's actually for all mining jobs. In Nunavut, they're sending people to Labrador for training. Is your intake entirely NWT, or are you getting people from Nunavut as well?
7:05 p.m.
General Manager, Mine Training Society
Our intake is strictly from the Northwest Territories. In the early days, we worked with the Kitikmeot Inuit Association on cementation, to teach underground mining. We have funded training for Baffinland Iron in their Mary River project. We helped to fund taking students down to Newfoundland for training with ten diamond drillers. But we focus on the Northwest Territories because that's our mandate.
7:05 p.m.
Conservative
John Duncan Conservative Vancouver Island North, BC
I didn't realize you had that Baffinland connection. That's great.
Ted, wearing your Aurora College hat, you said that 85% of your people in post-secondary are women. Did I hear that right?
7:05 p.m.
Director, Mine Training Society
You heard it right. I was talking about how 85% of the Tlicho graduates are young ladies. The evidence is there when you go to any of our offices.
7:05 p.m.
Conservative
John Duncan Conservative Vancouver Island North, BC
We're finding that throughout society women attend post-secondary at higher rates and with higher rates of success than men. I don't expect that you or I have an answer to this, but it is a challenge. Men are not showing up in the same way for post-secondary. It's an issue.
7:05 p.m.
Director, Mine Training Society
I think it's also showing up in the way that these young ladies are also taking courses in truck driving. The mining companies' big trucks are worth $7 million, and they prefer some of these young women to drive their trucks because they take the extra effort, the extra care, to look after their $7 million baby.
7:05 p.m.
Conservative
John Duncan Conservative Vancouver Island North, BC
I know what you mean. I've heard similar stories from other industries as well.
I want to cover the waterfront a little bit here. Boris, you talked about the lack of infrastructure behind some of your arts needs. I noticed that there was a need for a portable stage in Inuvik, and that was funded by the federal government. I was happy to see that. You always had to try to schedule it ahead of time, and with all the logistics involved, I could see how painful that would be.
In terms of funding on an ongoing basis, when we had our hearings in Whitehorse, we had that SINED funding, which is $30 million over five years for each territory. In Yukon they've already made an arrangement or accommodation that 20% of it will go to tourism and 10% will go to culture, so they already know that. It's already established. CanNor has agreed, the Yukon government has agreed, and the federal government has agreed. Is that something you could consider working towards?
7:10 p.m.
Manager, Community Programs, Northwest Territories Arts Council
It's certainly a broad objective under the NWT arts strategy to consider tourism. We have a sister department whose mandate is there. From the point of view of the arts council and my department, the conversation is always open.
Another conversation that's endless up here in the NWT is the comparison with Yukon and what they've done for their arts community and for tourism, and maybe what the focus is within the NWT. Artists are the first people to want to push that kind of notion.
Your comment about the infrastructure is telling, because the stage in Inuvik, supported through federal funds, was really prompted by the only performing arts facility that we have as a dedicated establishment in the territories, the Northern Arts and Cultural Centre. It has a mandate to serve all of the Northwest Territories, and there has been a lot of work on behalf of its board, which now includes members in Inuvik and Hay River, and not just in Yellowknife, to grow that.