Participants at a public meeting held recently by the Yellowknife Chamber of Commerce came up with a list of their nine top gripes.

Top nine reasons Yellowknife business people grind their teeth at night: 1. Labour shortage 2. Education 3. No housing 4. No convention centre 5. Downtown revitalization 6. Impacts of diamond mines 7. Tourism 8. Cross-cultural issues 9. Transportation costs and lack of infrastructure

Not surprisingly, the current labour shortage holds the number one spot.

We all know the story: Yellowknife doesn't have enough of a labour pool to keep up with its booming economy.

Lack of housing adds to the problem and, as a result, many businesses are desperate for employees and suffer from high staff turnover.

According to the chamber's executive director, Dale Thomson, 1,500 jobs are vacant in Yellowknife at any time.

When meeting one participant joked that the only people Yellowknife businesses don't actively recruit are the elderly and infants, someone called out: "We'll take the infants."

Everyone's aware the situation is bad. The Yellowknife Chamber of Commerce held the meeting partly to brainstorm for solutions.

Much of the labour shortage talk focused on how the education system could promote trades and technology as an option instead of pushing university.

"What we're hearing is that the education system is trying to train kids to go to university," said chamber president David McPherson.

"But many of them aren't doing that. And they are ending up with no other skills and no idea where they want to go."

The chamber has written letters to the Department of Education, Culture and Employment, and Aurora college and will meet with the college soon.

The chamber's goal is to get more industry-specific training in the North. The college could develop curriculum and set standards and the private sector could provide training, said McPherson.

"We want to provide links between these two institutions and the private sector to see if we can get some co-ordination."

Right now, the mines are picking up this slack because the government hasn't reacted quickly enough to skyrocketing demand, he said.

For example, De Beers recently released an 89-page booklet for high school students which lists all the jobs available at its upcoming mine, and explains what skills and training these jobs require.

"That's excellent," said McPherson. "We want to do that in other sectors."