Wally Schumann

Thank you, Mr. Chair. As maybe not all Members realize, but, when you ship your goods on MTS, when you sign your bill of lading, there is no guarantee in delivery. That is right on there when you sign it. There is an option for customers to buy insurance, which we highly encourage for damaged goods and stuff.

As Mr. Vandenberg stated, we won't be compensating businesses, That is true. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I am going to make it brief, but one thing I just talked to deputy what I want to do when we come in front of committee next week, I am going to find out exactly how many litres of fuel we delivered to the Arctic communities, and I am going to get a quote of how much it is to truck it to Inuvik to give committee a fair comparison on what it would cost. I think they are going to be pretty shocked.

For my closing comments, I thank all committee members for their questions. I think it is good that we have a public forum here to get this information out to the public. I need to reassure the public...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Companies like these two that the Member is referring to, they service a different market and do different types of work. Cooper's Barging, for example, maybe a lot of people don't realize, but they don't haul fuel. Their barges are only set up for deck cargo.

Companies like these, too, that the Member is referring to, they service a different market and do different types of work. Cooper’s Barging, for example, maybe a lot of people don’t realize, but they don’t haul fuel. Their barges are only set up for deck cargo. In rare, extreme cases they have hauled fuel on top...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. As I stated in the House, we have checked what is in stock in Sachs Harbour, and there is enough there to meet the demand until next sailing season. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Minister. The first thing I want to highlight for the Member: I think us buying MTS had a positive impact on him because Lutselk'e had two years of delivery of goods and fuel in his riding.

What we are going to do from this point forward is, as I have said in various different statements, we are going to hire another communications person, work closely with the communities on goods and delivery of services to the communities. We are working with Coast Guard on the sea ice issue and a number of other issues that we are going to address, hopefully, with him going forward around...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Without getting the exact timing, my understanding is it took the Coast Guard about ten days to reposition the buoys. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

As I've stated in this House before, we have a number of workshops that we conduct across all regions of the Northwest Territories. I don't have those stats right in front of me, but I notice a significant amount of people who have attended these. We continue to work with the business community. Certain Members in this House have brought up procurement as an issue with me. To date, I still have not had more than probably five complaints from the business community. I'm looking forward to this report that standing committee is going to present to me. I'll gladly sit down and have a discussion...

As I said earlier in my statements, we had a look at the SEED program and we realized that there were some pressures on it, and rising costs around some of these things. We got feedback from a number of NWT businesses, so we looked at changing this up. Our budget still is $3.86 million. That is what we talked about earlier already today, and that hasn't changed at all.

What has changed is individual applicants have increased for most of our programs, so one of the changes that we made is the individual contribution under the entrepreneurs stream. The entrepreneurs support stream has increased...

As I have said, we are moving forward with the mirrored legislation on devolution. We are looking at the Gas and Oil Operations Act. That's what we are working on. We are going to look at the rest of it in the 19th Assembly, should this bill pass here.

The Member is not going to like this comment, but you know, we have 200-and-some mandate commitments within this Government of the Northwest Territories. To zero down on a regulation here where there's exactly no activity going on in our territory wouldn't be a good use of my time and the department's time. I'm not shunning that responsibility...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I don't think I referenced the Federation of the Business thing, but I've met with them. They have their opinion on what's happening in the Northwest Territories. My recollection is they use a very small case of data to give us this grade, but we recognize that, as I've said, I'm a small business owner in the Northwest Territories. The one thing that we did that helped to address this is through our BizPaL program. That is a very good program. Online, you can go on there and it takes you through all the licensing and permitting or whatever you need to do to help...