Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We heard some good news in the House today: the minimum wage increase as well as dropping fuel prices. That’s great for our residents and great for people in the Northwest Territories. Today I want to speak about the small business sector and possibly how this minimum wage increase can affect our small businesses in the communities who are trying to get ahead, employ our residents and now they’re going to have to deal with the wage increase as well. I will be asking questions of the Minister of ITI if there’s a possibility that we can subsidize this.
The reality is that our small businesses, our big businesses are struggling in the Northwest Territories. We know there’s a high cost to doing business in the North – transportation, freight, moving things in and out of the small and remote communities – and another reality is there is a downturn in our economy. We see it in the Sahtu; we see it in the Beaufort-Delta and we’ve got to start looking at ways to support the small businesses and the big businesses in our communities so they can stay afloat.
So I’ll have questions today for the Minister of ITI, specifically on the SEED funding. It’s a program that we fund to our entrepreneurs to increase economic development and talk about when was the last time we had increases in the funding, when was the last time the policy was looked at. Due to the economic downturn in the North and in our territory, what are we doing to offset those so that the small business, the mom and pop businesses in the communities can stay afloat, some of them which have been residents of the Northwest Territories for a very long time.
So today I’ll talk about small businesses in the Northwest Territories, how we can continue to support them so that they can support our economy and the Northwest Territories and get people in the Northwest Territories working. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Moses. The Member for Weledeh, Mr. Bromley.
