Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I want to add too that we're looking at succession planning, as a lot of our staff who have been trained in those areas are getting ready for retirement. It's good that we're talking about capacity, because we want to build that capacity so that we're keeping the tradition alive

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Definitely. The foreign workers have moved into the community. Portage la Prairie and Neepawa are where the majority of the foreign workers are. They are the ones who are securing the jobs because they live right there, whereas our people have to travel in. I believe it's had a n

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Yes.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  The teachers went off site and came back.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Yes, we have nurses, certified health care aides, administrators and our tradesmen—plumbers and electricians—who have gone off site for training and come back to the community. What we are suggesting is that if we had the training available at the community level, even a cohort o

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Just recently—in the last few years—we've started a life skills program for students who have dropped out, to try to give them a head start as well as bring them up to par so they can go into the “mature 12”. We've actually had a few success stories where they've gone from there

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Yes, it is.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I'm not really sure about the day care, but I think they go by the need, so are there working parents out there? We want to support the staff who are working as well if they require day care, so it wouldn't be just a stay-at-home mom taking her kid in. As I alluded to earlier,

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  We've been trying to, but we haven't been able to secure the funding in those programs through Health Canada. We've always been told, “No.” The maternal and child health was a pilot project. There were, I think, 10 or 11 first nations communities in Manitoba that were picked, and

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  We want to strengthen it. Though the community members, teachers and staff are from the community and they speak the language, it's the children who might not speak it that much. We said we want to strengthen that and have some sort of a language class for the ones who don't unde

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Yes. In the community, all our staff.... How many staff do we have? 400?

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  We have about 400 staff, and I would say 90% of those staff are from the community. They're professionals. They're certified. Our health centre is accredited. We're looking at accreditation for our other facilities as well. That all stemmed from the past, and we feel that there's

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I was just going to mention that the seasonal work, like that in regard to potato harvesting, is in Portage la Prairie, but they had a huge influx of foreign workers. We don't really have that many people there anymore, because there are a lot of foreigners in Portage la Prairie

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Yes, I think that's part of it. I'm going to be frank here and let you know that the strongest language spoken in the community is in the families who did not attend residential schools and did not attend any school. That's where the language is strongest. In fact, that's their f

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Yes. We don't have the funding to send them somewhere. Plus, there's a lack of that training out there right now. Because there's such a huge need throughout the province, all of those spaces are full. What we'd like to see is a relationship with the university or one of the co