Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My statement again today is on fairness. We all know that there is economic disparity between the regions of the Northwest Territories. Last week I asked the Premier if departments would ask this question: Is this a position, a program, a project or a gathering that could be located outside of the capital in order to support strong, viable regions and communities? As I said before, we can’t control the decisions of the private sector, large industries, and we can’t control where natural resources are located, but we must look for ways to maximize benefits to Northerners, individuals and companies and bring meaningful economic activity to all regions to offset the gap that currently exists.
We have energetic, innovative entrepreneurs in our private sector that could sustain and create employment in various sectors of our economy, but here’s the challenge: access to working capital is often not readily available from conventional lenders. But here’s a real opportunity for our government. We have lending limits through our government lender, the BDIC, but it’s time to review those limits again and I think, like so many other government policies, we can craft the policy to achieve specific outcomes and specific goals. We have done this through the NWT Manufacturing Policy, Business Incentive Policy, Negotiated Contracts Policy and our Tourism Development Product Initiative. We need a policy that allows the BDIC to extend credit to businesses with a proven track record, which are willing to take on expansion and risk, focused on regions that are currently experiencing an economic downturn. Within the parameters of all due diligence, this can be done.
This is an initiative that could be a real boost to our economy and cost this government, all things going well, absolutely nothing because we are offering these loans at the going interest rates. So this would be a self-sustaining increase in the amount of money that we loan at this time and we need to look at the times, we need to look at the $2 million limit, we need to expand on that and I think we need to do it in the regions outside of the capital where right now we are experiencing significant economic downturn. We need help. Thank you.
Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. The Member for Sahtu, Mr. Yakeleya.
