Bob McLeod

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yes, we share those views. Thank you.

That's correct, Mr. Chair.

Yes. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I would like to thank Committee for their review of the main estimates. If I may, Mr. Chair, I wanted to point out that this will be the last time Penny Ballantyne will appear to defend the main estimates for the Executive. I wanted to thank her for all her support over the years. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

The Government of the Northwest Territories works hard to bring awareness to the significant benefits that mineral exploration, mine operations and processing can bring to people. The Government of the Northwest Territories through our Department of Education, Culture and Employment is working with the mines to support them in meeting their northern hiring targets. This includes connecting the mines with students, promoting employment opportunities throughout the Northwest Territories by working with and supporting the mines as they undertake regional and community recruitment initiatives...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. We set up a website to track it. It wasn't our intention to take over the responsibility to increase the number of women. Certainly, if we can't get nominations from the MLAs submitting women, certainly we can change the process whereby we will go out and find women to fill these positions. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I would ask you, through you, Richard Robertson, please.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. That would be the Government House Leader and myself. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

That is correct. For those that are not in government offices. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. At one time we had a deputy minister of Intergovernmental Affairs based out of Ottawa and we had government offices. We found it was very helpful and useful to have a government office in Ottawa, so we've continued to maintain a government office. It keeps getting smaller and cheaper all the time just because of what's happening in Ottawa. The office space we had in the Delta building, because of renovations, we were able to get out of our lease and get a significantly better deal in or new office, which everybody should visit when they're in Ottawa, which has a view of...

We've taken a number of different approaches to it. Most of the mining companies that are operating in the Northwest Territories are very large companies that stake their reputation on achieving the targets that they've negotiated. We use a process of publishing the reports. Where those targets are not being met, we follow up with meetings. Certainly in the first instance when there was difficulty meeting targets, the diamond companies came to meet with us to find, well, why weren't we producing more students that could meet the academic requirements that could be streamed into trades or so on...