Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, my questions are for the Minister of Industry, Tourism and Investment. My questions are about the government's policies in support of northern businesses and manufacturing. Northern manufacturing includes the full spectrum of the economy from agriculture to industry. How is the GNWT promoting local manufactured products and encouraging residents to buy local? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Masi. Minister of Industry, Tourism and Investment.
I'm glad to answer this question, because before I got elected to the 18th Legislative Assembly I helped move the manufacturing group together and get lobby together to how we can make things better within the GNWT and working with the manufacturers. Currently, the department is working with the Manufacturers' Association in updating their marketing plan moving forward, with a goal to help them promote their products both within the Northwest Territories and within industry and this is something that we are working on.
Thank you to the Minister for his reply, and I also commend the Minister for his previous efforts in this regard. Mr. Speaker, recently ITI provided a presentation at Opportunities North conference that showed small businesses were in significant decline in the NWT. How is ITI working to determine why small business is in decline, more importantly how will they correct this trend?
Yes, small business is in decline in the Northwest Territories and probably right across Canada in most jurisdictions as the economy has been in a downturn for quite a while. There are lots of challenges facing northern businesses. People are shopping online, people are going south to stretch their dollars as much as they can, but what is the department doing to correct this trend?
We have a number of programs that we're trying to do to help small businesses in the Northwest Territories, from the SEED Program, to marketing their programs, to assisting them with financing and stuff as such. We will continue to do that and we will continue to work with the small businesses and chambers across the Northwest Territories to try to correct this trend.
Thank you to the Minister for his reply. Mr. Speaker, my final question is: as we develop contracts for larger projects, are we emphasizing local benefits by ensuring that subcontracts are bundled into manageable accessible segments for local independent business?
As a government, we're always looking at how to maximize local and Northern content in all contracts and procurement in the Northwest Territories, and we will continue to review our policies and stuff moving forward to maximize that.
A couple of things that we do use already to help maximize local involvement is the BIP Policy; that gives someone local and northern content to give you a little leverage over anyone else, and also the Northern Manufacturing Policy has a whole different set of rules around it to help people purchase northern manufactured products in NWT. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Masi. Oral questions. Member for Hay River North.
