Thank you for the question.
First, in terms of the formal education piece, we know that through AANDC the programs have been capped at 2% for the longest time. Our young people continue to struggle to enter formal post-secondary streams. Communities are sorely lacking in resources just for that piece. We would encourage the government to have a look at increasing those budgets for communities.
Specifically to mining, we do access some special program funding through NRCan and some other resources available to us from the federal government, but again it's never enough, at least in our case. We've looked into places like the Borden gold project in Chapleau, where communities are at about 90% unemployment. We have young people between the ages of 20 and 35 who are stranded, who have no hope. There is not a lot of industry in that particular town. We really do need a significant investment from the federal government to bring those folks up to speed, just in terms of job readiness programs, never mind learning how to handle a jackleg drill or how to do the actual job at the site. It's just preparing people to enter the workforce. That's our first step in training the folks.
Again, we would look to the federal government to increase those budgets that we have available. We have had some success in accessing funding, but it's lacking. I understand the SPF program that we're currently applying for is oversubscribed this year across the country and there's been a delay until January with respect to our applications. The mine is looking to open and go underground in February, and we're sitting and waiting for a decision on applications.