Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My Member’s statement today was on economic development programs in the Nunakput. Mr. Speaker, my colleague Mr. Beaulieu has lack of jobs in our small, remote communities and people having to leave home to find work to feed their families. Mr. Speaker, will this government place more attention and resources in small, remote communities regarding community-based economic development programs to assist small businesses? These resources should assist areas such as providing community-based training and financial assistance. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Jacobson. The honourable Minister of Industry, Tourism and Investment, Mr. Bob McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Member for Nunakput raises a very good point. I know that I had the opportunity to meet with Senator Eggleton. We talked about how to deal with adding poverty and he had three recommendations. He said to deal with it, you had to have an anti-poverty strategy. You had to create jobs. For people that are disabled, he would have some sort of guaranteed income.
In my view, the best way to deal with anti-poverty is to create jobs. I think that, as a government, we are well on our way to creating jobs. We have to work in partnership with industry and also other levels of government. In Nunakput itself, we have worked at this for some time. Our objective as a government is to have development in every community of the Northwest Territories. In Nunakput, we created a subsidiary in Sachs Harbour, for the harvesting of musk-ox. In Ulukhaktok, we created a subsidiary for arts and crafts. We set up a business and also in Paulatuk, we expect a mining development to Darnley Bay. In Tuk, there has been work done on roads. So there have been some significant government investments, but we need to do more. We are prepared to work with the people of Nunakput to create more jobs. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the Minister for highlighting all of those, but we want more. There are no jobs going on with the offshore oil and gas being up in the air for... The holdback on drilling for the offshore and the pipeline, we are still waiting for that. Delay, delay, delay. Hopefully we can get something done there.
Again, Mr. Speaker, as I mentioned in my Member’s statement, I challenge the Minister of the government to develop options in a concrete plan so we can deliver these opportunities to the residents before this Assembly is over.
Mr. Speaker, we have done a lot of work in this area already but we are prepared to do even more. We committed at the Beaufort-Delta Regional Council that we would host a regional workshop with the members of the community in which we would look at opportunities. We would even look at setting out a plan as what we would need to go forward. We would even go as far as look at creating an inventory of possible jobs or opportunities that could be moved to some of the communities. I don’t know if we have call centres that could be moved or not, but we’re prepared to look at those types of opportunities. Thank you.
Will the government explore all current technologies in the needs of the Northwest Territories and try to find ways for small, remote communities all across the Territory that can assist and benefit? Thank you.
In a Territory like ours where we have a large expanse and we have few people, I think we have to take advantage of technologies if we’re going to be able to reduce the cost of living and to create meaningful employment. We’re very prepared to do that as part of our meeting in holding a workshop with the Nunakput people. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Your final supplementary, Mr. Jacobson.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The cost of living the Minister brings up, I mean that’s where as a government we should be pushing our all-weather road from Wrigley to Tuk, especially the part from Tuk to Inuvik off of 177. There’s a lot of good opportunities there, training programs that we could get from that and as a whole government we should be working toward getting the all-weather highway. Thank you.
Thank you. I don’t know if I heard a question there, but I’ll refer it to Mr. McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Premier and all of the Ministers on this side, we’ve said that the North has never received as much attention as we’re getting now and certainly we’ve always said that the best way to promote Arctic sovereignty is to have healthy sustainable communities, and that includes building highways and so on, and developing all the business opportunities such as oil and gas. So we are going to be working very hard as a government to ensure that we do create jobs for remote communities. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The honourable Member for Sahtu, Mr. Yakeleya.
