Bob McLeod

We have a variety of delivery agents and either they’re ITI staff or they’re community transferred positions or we contract with a band or some other entity to provide the service. So what we do is if it’s a community transferred position, we review it periodically. We make sure that the funding we’ve been providing is adequate. We bring together all of our delivery agents together on a regular basis to make sure that everybody has the same information and also to communicate and market the programs that we have. If the Member feels that that’s not happening in his community, well, we will...

That’s correct, Mr. Chairman. Those dollars have to be confirmed so that we can include it. They will probably show up next year.

Our expectation is that the money would be available from existing ITI funding programs. If there was a requirement for additional funding, we would have to look at the $2 million that’s available from... We’d have to work with ENR for any incremental requirements.

Yes, I do, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

That is my understanding, and working with ENR we’ll be working closely with the NWT Association of Communities and engaging communities. I’d like to point out that our expectation is because of the fact that our government has had tremendous success in promoting the use of biomass in the Northwest Territories and you can see it in the large number of government buildings that are using wood pellets. So I expect that we’ll have similar success with communities, although because of the fact that there’s biomass available in every community in the Northwest Territories except maybe in the...

We do have a seamless operation when it comes to the issuing of loans and contributions. The difference, it all depends on the business itself. If we do have an interest in there, then we can go in there and do a post-mortem. If it’s somebody in the private sector, then we would probably have to respond to their request in order to be able to gain access to information which is generally private information.

To me it’s a function of making sure that the protocol agreements that are in place work properly. It’s also a function of education and it’s a function of developing a working arrangement that is client centred and client focused. We’re here to provide the best service we can to our clientele and I think with the community transfer delivery agents, for example, we had to provide additional funding so that the different communities that had these positions were properly funded. We made sure they’re involved and trained and well aware of all of the programs that are available through our tool...

For Lutselk’e we’re looking at a start date of 2012-2013. Whati is much more difficult to pinpoint. We also have the Taltson Hydro Project that is undergoing regulatory review and our Hydro Strategy, which we have significant expenditures planned there. If the Member is interested I’ll ask Mr. Vician, through you, Mr. Chair, to go into more detail.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I think the failure rate of small businesses is quite high not only in the Northwest Territories but all across Canada, especially in the first year of operation. So we have a process called Aftercare, where we look at the way we provide services and wherever we’re involved in a business and it goes under, then we want to know what some of the reasons were for the business going under and to try to find out exactly why. So if we do have a similar business in the future, we would have a very good idea of some of the pitfalls that they could come up against.