Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In the old days, we used to call the Department of Infrastructure public works, including its transportation forerunner. In those days, they used to spend a lot of time to develop the trades industry through trades apprentices.
Mr. Speaker, my question is really about the framework of how we're working to support the lack of tradespeople on the ground and what role the GNWT plays. So I am going to start with asking the Minister is he aware of how many apprentices do we have within the GNWT system, specifically infrastructure? Thank you.
Thank you, Member from Yellowknife Centre. Minister of Infrastructure.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We have quite a few positions for apprenticeships. I don't know the current status of how many are filled. I can get that information. However, most recently, I have been working with the department on trying to find out exactly where the positions are, are they filled, how many we could get out, posted out there, and if there's an ability that we can work with ECE to enable the SNAP program in those positions in order to get young people into those programs. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Okay, thank you, Mr. Speaker. And I appreciate the answer from the Minister. I will take that information if he can provide it. I believe the ratio is one tradesperson and two apprentices. Now, I am not saying we have to hire a thousand apprentices, but my next question is about how we maximize the opportunity about getting people trained and employed and becoming maybe independent contractors in their own right.
So, Mr. Speaker, can the Minister acknowledge and provide some information and enlightenment around that type of ratio. How are we meeting that challenge by hiring as many tradespeople to ensure that we have folks who can do this type of work? Thank you.
Yeah, thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yeah, ideally, we'd love to have that many apprenticeship people working, and, ideally, we'd love everybody who has a ticket to take on an apprenticeship. And that's ideally the goal. But at the end of the day, we just have to find the positions that are available, and if we can fill them, that'd be perfect. So, again, the goal is to find out how many we have open and available and continue to try to work to advocate to get these positions filled by hopefully, you know, young Northerners who decide to stay in the North and looking for work. So if we can catch them in high school and get them into the program, that would be perfect. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Minister of Infrastructure. Final supplementary. Member from Yellowknife Centre.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Catch them in high school, that's the only time I hear the positive phrase catch and release. We catch them, train them, and release them into the public.
Mr. Speaker, my experience around the broader portion of public works, and certainly as the MLA through understanding the system of infrastructure, etcetera, often we have a lot deferred maintenance and work outstanding, and we're not meeting that, SO how are we meeting these objectives to ensure that the GNWT assets are fully protected and maintained, knowing we're struggling to get tradespeople and potentially struggling even getting apprentices doing this work? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We have many tradespeople in the Department of Infrastructure that go around and, you know, do a lot of preventative maintenance on a lot of our assets in the GNWT. We have an asset management program that we utilize, and we have staff that -- you know, that are trained to take care of all our assets. So ideally, again, we'd like to have people training under them for many reasons, and hopefully we can get some good numbers back to the Member on positions open and where the staff are working. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Oral questions. Member from Range Lake.
