Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I believe the North is a great place to live. People are warm and friendly despite the climate some days. Certainly it’s a wonderful place to work and I want more people in Canada and the world to know this, but sometimes I find it’s one of the best kept secrets out there. So today I want to express my concern to the Minister of Industry, Tourism and Investment and encourage him to take on a new and bold step to help attract businesses to the Northwest Territories.
We’ve all heard about what some other provinces do to attract people and businesses. Take Saskatchewan, for example. They are recruiting young people by offering to forgive their student loans. Quebec takes step by supporting business investment, so they can be established. New Brunswick has painted itself as the ideal place for call centres.
So, Mr. Speaker, many provincial and community governments are not sitting idly by waiting for businesses to show up on their door. They are out there aggressively attracting and pursuing those types of business investments. You can find their websites that provide masses of information that help those businesses make that relocation decision. It’s coordinated information that is useful in the busy climate of being in business. You can obtain information about how to attract skilled workers in that local area, cost of services, special grants, loans. It makes it really business friendly when that industry of investment starts working for their province.
Some provinces offer young entrepreneurs special mentorship programs and they certainly help them establish their businesses. Their governments know what’s going on, but, Mr. Speaker, I wonder if ours realizes what we’re missing out on. I can’t say the Government of the Northwest Territories isn’t open for business, but I can tell you the warm welcome isn’t there.
Mr. Speaker, we need continued investment in our economy. All you have to do is look at our continued drop in our corporate taxes to see the signals that are there. Businesses are either not busy or people are no longer coming to the North. Mr. Speaker, I want the Minister of ITI to consider starting a task force that could advise him on ways to help attract new investment and new businesses to relocate to the Northwest Territories. Perhaps we need to provide special loans; I don’t know. But that type of discussion needs to be asked: what works for business and what would attract them here to the North.
Mr. Speaker, there are a lot of opportunities that exist out there and I don’t want to watch them go by. I will have questions to the Minister later today and we’ll discuss it further then. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. The honourable Member for Mackenzie Delta, Mr. Krutko.
