Bob McLeod

Mr. Speaker, the only program we have right now is the Progressive Experience Program, but we’d be prepared to look at something for the next business-planning cycle. Certainly, if we can reduce the costs to the government by having the private sector hire more summer students, I think that would be something we could work towards.

This is an area we’ve been trying to address for some time. We haven’t been able to work it out, principally because for contribution funding, we have to come to the Legislative Assembly every year for our budgets to be approved. I guess until such time as we find a way to deal with that, only at that time will we be able to address the Member’s question. It’s certainly an area we would want to try to achieve.

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...

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.

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...

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

Mr. Chair, I guess we didn’t want to create more work than we needed to. Based on the knowledge of the programs, we felt we knew in what areas we could make reductions. I guess, essentially, we did an analysis without formalizing it.