I have some questions for the Minister of Industry, Tourism and Investment, Minister McLeod, and it gets back again to the Opportunities Fund. I want to stand up here today and say that I’m not trying to beat up Discovery Air. They provide valuable service to our residents here. They contribute a great deal to our economy. It’s not Discovery Air that I have an issue with, Mr. Speaker, it’s the process that allowed the government to lend money without any oversight or accountability. Like I said earlier, I’d be phoning the Auditor General of Canada to look after that aspect of it.
The question I have for the Minister of ITI is, I do believe -- and it’s easy to ask questions. We want to work with you. We want to come up with creative ways so we can stimulate the northern economy. I’d like to ask the Minister what type of ways will the Minister of ITI engage Regular Members in a discussion on how we can stimulate the local economy here in the Northwest Territories.
Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Honourable Minister of Industry, Tourism and Investment, Mr. Bob McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We would like to work very closely with the committee as well. I’ve written to the chair of the standing committee and advised her of our decision on the most recent proposal, and indicated to her that we will be working with the committee and whatever other parties that we feel should be consulted with to develop investment policies and revised procedures. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, again it gets tiresome asking questions, asking questions. We want to be fully engaged with the Minister and with the government so that we can move some things forward here. This Opportunities Fund, the more I look at it, an opportunity here for us as a government to stimulate our economy would be to borrow some of this money ourselves and invest it in businesses here in the Northwest Territories, and get to work on stimulating our economy. Instead, decisions are being made without our input that we have to question. You know, we have to stand up here and question. It’s that adversarial and antagonistic thing that I don’t...You know, I’m starting to get really tired of that. I want to work with these guys. Will they work with us? Thank you.
Certainly, we’re very pleased and we want to continue to work with the committees. One of the things that we’ve looked at is investing the money in the government business programs. This is another area that we can look at, recognizing that the loans programs that we have with the government, there’s a loss ratio of about 14 to 20 percent loss, which we have to come to this Assembly to write off, so we take that into consideration.
We’d be very pleased to continue to work with the standing committees. We also have the Ministerial Advisory Panel on the Economy that we will be consulting with on all of our business programs and on how we deal with the economy.
I’d like to ask the Minister if it would be possible for the Government of the Northwest Territories to access a portion of that Opportunities Fund to set up a program that would stimulate local business here in the Northwest Territories. Is that a possibility and if it is, can we get to work on that immediately?
Other jurisdictions in this country are working diligently on propping up their economies and doing things in hard times that make some sense, and we should be doing the same here. Right now, I don’t think we’re doing enough and that might be an opportunity to get something done. Thank you.
The loan that we’re talking about is a northern company that we’ve invested in. We’re very pleased to and what we are trying to do is use that fund for that. We would be very pleased to work with the committee to do exactly that.
I should point out that the Opportunities Fund is funded through the Immigrant Investment Program and the $400,000 that was invested by the immigrants has to be repaid within five years. The type of investments that we think would work best are companies that can pay a fairly high rate of interest, that can pay it all back within a five-year period. Also, the federal government charges 7 percent on the money. They take it right off the top.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Final supplementary, Mr. Ramsay.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The process right now...I mean, really there isn’t a process, but what there is is not fair and it’s not transparent. What I’m saying is we need to come up with something that’s fair to everybody in the Northwest Territories. Like I said, it’s nothing against Discovery Air. I know they’re a good company. I know they’re going to do everything they can to pay this off at the end of four years. The fact remains, though, that we have to do more for other businesses and in this process that’s there, it just isn’t fair. That’s what people are saying and that’s what people want to have addressed. So I’d like to ask the Minister again, while we haven’t had a discussion on what sectors of our economy may be even more important than others, can we have that discussion? If we have to pay a bit of a premium on the interest rates to get some stimulus package out there for our residents, maybe that’s a discussion that we should have, but we should have it together, Mr. Speaker, not just Cabinet making decisions like this. It should all be all of us making these decisions together. Thank you.
We want to work with the standing committees and we also want to get out very quickly so we can find a way to come up with a revised investment policy that’s transparent, that meets everybody’s requirements, because we’d like to get this money out there and working. So we’ll get out there quickly to get it to the stage whereby we can get the money working. We definitely want to work with the Members.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The honourable Member for Weledeh, Mr. Bromley.
