Katrina Nokleby
Statements in Debates
I can get back to you with the details. However, my understanding is we can land significant-sized airplanes on the Yellowknife runway, so I would have to get back to you on that. However, the Yellowknife airport has a master plan. Sorry, I will have to get back to the Member. I am being reminded of my protocols.
There is a Yellowknife airport master plan. If you'll just bear with me to let me find the correct page here, I can give you some details on that. The Yellowknife airport is being looked at. Oh, where did I lose it here? It's being looked at for its own capacity and its own merits...
I apologize. Could the Member repeat his question?
[Microphone turned off] ...have the numbers on what's happening for this next period of time with the funding that we already received from the federal government and the money that we had committed, and we discussed that as part of the mains in the budget discussion. We have our funding at the moment for the work we are carrying forward. I can provide you with those actual numbers if you like. I do think we have provided them in the past. I just do not have them right in front of me right now.
As you can see in the mandate, this program will be developed going forward. I believe the idea is that we look at, say, small businesses or certain types of industry where there are people accessing our ITI programs in order to provide funding to get their business going, or to learn some certain aspects of the business. We would be looking to create a program where we could partner up successful businesspeople or successful tradespeople, or whatever program it might be under, that we then can partner them to these entrepreneurs or these new emerging businesses, so that they can learn from...
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It's my understanding that the Tlicho Government was involved with the negotiation of the numbers and the quota for the Tlicho All-Season Road, so I cannot speak specifically to why those numbers were not as the Member would like to see. However, I believe, as the Cabinet and all of us together, all 19 of us together, have made retaining our government dollars in the North and maximizing them for the benefits of all residents of the Northwest Territories a priority that we are committed to, one that I am personally committed to, I think that the Member will see that...
Yes. We would be looking to continue on with our SEED and business planning funding and continue to build out those supports to small businesses. I guess I would say that this is already work that ITI does, so as we go forward and we have discussions with intergovernmental meetings, like bilaterals and such, this is a conversation I am having on sort of a case-by-case or region-by-region basis with each government. What I'm doing is, I've been listening to them, and trying to get their inputs and feedbacks on what they're not feeling is working with the department.
What I'm really starting to...
Technically, Infrastructure. I would like to clarify that nothing has been taken away from the runway in Fort Smith, and the functionality of the airport is exactly as it was prior to the narrowing. Cell phones used to be this big. Now they are this big. Getting smaller does not mean anything has been reduced in functionality. Should anybody feel that the Fort Smith airport is not performing as it needs to, including being able to land 737s, I would encourage them to have the airlines raise that safety concern through the safety protocols under Transport Canada. I don't mean to belabour that...
As I said before, I can't tell you when the business cases will be completed. I do believe, in the mandate, there isn't a timeline established at this point, but that is going to be dependent on what we get. I did just want to point out some of the value. A 2018 historic value of production report is estimated, from the mines within or around the Slave Geological Province, at $45 billion, so I would argue that that would be, I guess, the mineral resource potential of that region. I think that there is a clear case for why these should go forward, but I will commit to going back to the...
I think that one thing that we do need to keep in mind, while maybe the 25 percent that we are putting forward is very dear, or definitely we have things we could be spending our money on, we do need to remember that that has leveraged us a 75 percent amount of funding from the federal government that can only be used towards these types of projects. While we are spending money that potentially we could use elsewhere, we are actually bringing in larger amounts of dollar into our territory which is a contribution to our economy that we wouldn't have otherwise.
Oftentimes in hard economic times...
Thank you. Yes, so we are currently in the background sort of data collection, study, where we are hoping to, at the end of that, be able to produce the business cases, which would then include all of the costing, et cetera, for those projects. I do not have that information on hand at the moment.