Thank you, Anne-Marie.
I think it's important that educational attainment doesn't focus just on the industry. It should focus on different sectors—health, public sector jobs, private sector jobs, having your own enterprise, and so forth. Also, we need the ability to move from one region to the next to apply our skills. It's not just going to be your local people in one place. It should provide for people to move different places for different opportunities.
In fact, at one of the meetings we had with the ITK board of directors back in September, the presidents of the land claim organizations suggested that Inuit from one region should be able to go to another Inuit region to get work experience in that region and to share their knowledge.
For instance, if someone is working in Labrador and is from Labrador, he could move to the Northwest Territories and the Inuvialuit region and get hired there and then transfer that whole Inuit-to-Inuit experience. That includes a number of different areas, including the highly skilled areas of development. In one region, there might be a highly developed area for Inuit who are skilled in mapping, whereas in another Inuit region that's not so much the case. But you could transfer and move. There are different creative ways to use the leadership to do that within the Inuit world.
The Mackenzie pipeline has been going on for a whole generation, but they haven't started it yet. A lot of these projects take a long time. I agree with Mr. Scherkus that this is a beginning point. Even for the land claim agreements for Inuit, this is a beginning point—the first 30 years of starting out. These are big questions.
Industry and employment have to be approached in a holistic way. You can't let opportunity outstrip people's education, and you can't let opportunity escape the region itself.
I think people are enthusiastic because they want those things in place to make it work. If fundamental areas are falling behind, it's not going to work. I think we all have to agree that a larger strategy around these issues has to be looked at in the Arctic. We have a high cost of living and a high cost of doing business. We have important regulatory frameworks. Perhaps they are time-consuming, but those are the realities. How do you improve that? How do you look at it with acceptance in mind? I think that's an important part of this, because Inuit aren't going to leave the Arctic. They're going to be there. Whether there are jobs or not, the Inuit are going to remain in the Arctic as their homeland.