Mr. Speaker, I quite enjoyed the member's speech and thought it had a lot of interesting points, and of course anyone who has been in the Yukon cannot be bad. I did object strongly to one statement he made when he said that we need mines in the north, in Yellowknife, in the Northwest Territories, Nunavut, Manitoba and northern Saskatchewan. How could anyone leave out the constituency of the parliamentary secretary, the Yukon? We need mining jobs in Yukon as well.
I would like to compliment the member on his mention of geoscience. I can tell him that our department is very strongly supportive of geoscience. I agree with him totally that we have had excellent investments in geoscience. In the past, the Government of Canada has made major investments in geoscience, which have had productive results. I think we can lobby together in that area.
As he mentioned, in the north there is still a lot of unmapped area, particularly in Nunavut. I would ask the member to comment further on that.
I would also ask him to comment further on skills development and HRSDC and programs that we might put in place or might support to get more value added out of the industry. We have a very small value added industry now. There is some polishing and cutting in Yellowknife, Gaspé, Toronto and Vancouver. Is there anything we could do to get more people involved in the industry and is there any support that he or his party might have for Skills Development Canada initiating such programs?