Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, yesterday I spoke to one of the underdeveloped sectors of our economy. There are several other underdeveloped sectors, which I will speak to in time, but today I want to focus on the significant economic activity we already have and how we can maximize benefits from it.
Mr. Speaker, for such a small territory, we have a huge amount of economic activity happening; so much so that we are often unable or unprepared to fully benefit from it. Our diamond mines rely on a significant number of employees from outside of the NWT to sustain their operations for example. I suggest that there is more we can do to incentivize northern hiring than we currently do. I shared frustration with a lot of Northerners when the mines moved their head offices out of the North, and the territorial government did not take substantive action to hold them accountable for moving more benefits out of the North. I think we should be looking into what measures we can put in place to incentivize all companies who operate in the North to ensure benefits stay here. We also need to ensure our royalty regime is robust and ensures benefits to Northerners from resource extraction are maximized, which is a statement unto itself.
Another sector which is poised to grow here in the near future, Mr. Speaker, is mine remediation. The Giant Mine project alone is projected to cost billions, and I believe we are not currently prepared to maximize the benefits to the North from this project. In order to fully benefit from the remediation, we are going to need to look at how procurement processes can help to create capacity and maximize northern benefit, and we need to be preparing our workforce. Ideally, our new polytechnic could develop a program which teaches mine development through the lens of remediation through a mine cycle technologist program. We are uniquely poised to be a leading jurisdiction for this kind of training with some of the biggest and best regulated remediation projects occurring in the country, if not the world.
Thank you, Member from Frame Lake. Members' statements. Member from Sahtu.
