Mr. Speaker, our opportunity as residents of Nunavut to manage our own affairs will come in about 117 days with the establishment of Canada's third territory, Nunavut, on April 1, 1999. To do this we need to have trained personnel.
Part of the challenge in creating a civil servant employment base representative of the population has been met by the innovative Sivuluiqtit Nunavut Management Development Program created by Nunavut Arctic College and the Canadian Centre for Management Development.
This partnership designed a very effective program that allows participants to continue working in their home communities with periods of intense formal training in Ottawa and other centres to expose them to best practices management theories and Inuit traditional ways.
A unique element of this program is the utilization of mentors and elders, giving Sivuluiqtit a dimension unlike any other training program. The success rate alone is testament to the effectiveness of this holistic approach to training.