Bob McLeod

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We have a number of programs to entice summer students to return to the Northwest Territories. It comes in two forms: the northern Summer Student Employment Program and the Northern Graduate Employment Program. The programs that the Member is referring to…. Under the Northern Graduate Employment Program, we have a Graduate Transition Program, and that program is being reduced. It was a program to place returning students with the private sector as interns, and the government subsidized interns up to $25,000. Unfortunately, that program is being phased out, and we’re...

I guess we don’t want to be presumptuous; we want to make sure we follow all of our consultation requirements and provide early notification and so on. I think that probably within a month or so our new program will be out, which much more clearly identifies and defines market disruption to address exactly the situation the Member raised.

Seventy six per cent of the total businesses that have been BIP’d are located in Yellowknife, Hay River, Inuvik and Fort Smith. They obtain 62 per cent of government contracting in all of the Northwest Territories. Certainly we will be consulting with the Regular MLAs.

I should point out also that the Business Incentive Policy is only one of several ways to provide incentives to increase competition. One of the problems we’ve been facing is that several large northern businesses have been bought out by southern businesses and they’re still considered to be BIP’d. Similarly, large construction...

The GNWT departments, as my colleague has stated, are seeing that the business incentive program has been having a negative impact on both the delivery of infrastructure and on the price of infrastructure because of the lack of competition. So what I will be doing is undertaking a process by which I would proceed through an orderly process to look at the BIP with a view to rescinding it and coming up with a way to protect local and northern purchasing.

I know that Maude Barlow has made some comments about NAFTA, but I’m not clear on what the implications of NAFTA are on the Business Incentive Policy. I do know that under the Agreement on Internal Trade within Canada, which all of the provinces and territories have signed on to, we have been able to carve out the Business Incentive Policy. That allows us to have a northern preference for business. We intend to protect that part of Agreement on Internal Trade and also the fact that…. I’ll leave it at that.

That’s certainly been our intention, and we have followed that, and we have written to the committee advising them of that.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to take the opportunity today as the lead Minister to provide an update on actions associated with the Managing This Land Strategic Initiative.

The Managing This Land initiative is one of five strategic initiatives that form the backbone of our government’s plan to advance the priorities of the 16th Assembly and advance us toward our vision and goals. The actions planned under this initiative are: continue to develop governance, protect territorial water, work to mitigate and adapt to climate change impacts, improve environmental monitoring efforts, and environmental...

Mr. Speaker, I’d like to recognize two long-time senior managers with the federal government: Mr. Daniel Watson and Ms. Liseanne Forand.

Mr. Speaker, today is the first day of Tourism Week in Canada. It is a chance for us to highlight the tremendous importance of this sector to our national and local economies and to our lives as Canadians.

In the Northwest Territories tourism is a $113 million a year industry. More importantly, it is an area of investment that offers many spin-off benefits and has the potential to establish and grow viable and sustainable ventures in almost every one of our region’s 33 communities.

As a government we are acutely aware of the importance and significance of our tourism industry and the economic...

The intention of the panel is to create jobs and benefits for some of the smaller communities. The economy is heated here in Yellowknife. I think we benefit from there. We heard the Member for Tu Nedhe talking about the lack of jobs and opportunities in the communities in his riding. Our approach is…. We want to try to provide for all the communities.

I did indicate that the size of the panel would be up to 12 members. We haven’t really nailed it down in stone as to who would be represented on it. Certainly, we’d be willing to consider putting representatives, or NGOs, as the Member suggested.