Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My statement today will be on business. As you all know, throughout this Assembly I’ve made a lot of statements on business and some of the issues that we’re having with our government and their lack of support and their difficulty supporting northern business.
Our Business Incentive Policy has got a bunch of flaws in it. Our Public Works and Services shared services has flaws in it. We continue to have issues with the government and the bureaucracy having the thought process of supporting northern businesses as opposed to finding a way to support southern businesses. I equate it to a map that we often see of NTCL where they are actually from the North Pole looking south. South should be down there. We shouldn’t be focused on how do we do business, and we should make sure that southern businesses can bid up here. We should be working on how we can get northern companies jobs and business in the Northwest Territories.
I’ve had numerous occasions where departments give the specs and certifications to a southern company saying we need a fire pit that’s powder coated. Nobody in the Northwest Territories powder coats. We got it from some other southern firm that gave us a quote. We’re buying mobile homes throughout the Northwest Territories. We don’t build mobile homes in the Northwest Territories. Why aren’t we doing that?
Again, we just put out four tenders for plow trucks. Again, Kingland Ford, second in bid, but the low bidder is going to build everything in Quebec and Ontario. Nothing is going to be done in the Northwest Territories. We’re selling to a northern company but all the work is being done in the South. We know that in a lot of Kingland’s, they’re putting 51 percent, over $100,000 worth of work, thousands of hours of work into these projects.
Our government has been partnering up. We looked at 802 airplanes instead of partnering with businesses that wanted to extend the life of some of the equipment we currently have. We have the electrical business where we didn’t even talk to the current electrical provider, NUL. Our Cabinet felt that they didn’t need to do that.
We’ve got to stop looking at the South and saying they’re the way to go. We need to support northern businesses in the North.
Thank you, Mr. Bouchard. The Member for Weledeh, Mr. Bromley.
