Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, my questions are for the Minister of Industry, Tourism and Investment. Earlier today, my colleague from Hay River North spoke a lot about red tape and redundancy that we have within the Government of the Northwest Territories. He referenced the Canadian Federation of Independent Business and how they consistently give us failing grades, or an F. I just want to know: does our government recognize this ongoing and never-ending failing grade, or do we just flat-out reject it? You know, this institute comes and gives us this every year. Or better yet, what are we actually doing to identify our own challenges with regard to red tape and the roadblocks that small businesses face within our government? Do we foresee that we have these challenges and are we doing anything about them? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Masi. Minister of Industry, Tourism and Investment.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I don't think I referenced the Federation of the Business thing, but I've met with them. They have their opinion on what's happening in the Northwest Territories. My recollection is they use a very small case of data to give us this grade, but we recognize that, as I've said, I'm a small business owner in the Northwest Territories. The one thing that we did that helped to address this is through our BizPaL program. That is a very good program. Online, you can go on there and it takes you through all the licensing and permitting or whatever you need to do to help, especially brand new entrepreneurs, know exactly what they need to do, from workers' compensation to all these sorts of things. It's clearly laid out in there, and I believe that we are doing the best we can to help address this.
"Best we can" is really kind of vague, to be quite frank. If the Minister could please elaborate a little bit to share with us what "best we can" means. What does that mean as it relates to the silos that seem to be kind of structured between various departments that small businesses have to interact with on a daily basis? You know, the business community sees the Department of ITI as their representative at the territorial level. What is the government actually doing to identify the challenges of red tape, bureaucracy, and redundancy, and what, I'll call it, policies, are they developing to help break that down?
This is kind of like our procurement issue. I've never had anyone come and knock on my door complaining about red tape. I'm glad to work with the chair of the standing committee, of SCEDI, and sit down if they have any ideas on how we can rectify red tape within the Government of Northwest Territories. I'm glad to have those discussions.
I'm glad that the Minister brought it up, in fact. Government procurement obviously contributes significantly to the business community in the Northwest Territories. We have raised a number of times concerns around government procurement. The Standing Committee on Economic Development and Environment undertook a survey this summer. We are hoping to put forward a report later to table in the House and share with the Minister and his department about the challenges that we found.
I would just like to ask the Minister: can he explain the processes maybe through which his department engages with the business community to seek out and find out how they can improve their procurement processes and policies?
As I've stated in this House before, we have a number of workshops that we conduct across all regions of the Northwest Territories. I don't have those stats right in front of me, but I notice a significant amount of people who have attended these. We continue to work with the business community. Certain Members in this House have brought up procurement as an issue with me. To date, I still have not had more than probably five complaints from the business community. I'm looking forward to this report that standing committee is going to present to me. I'll gladly sit down and have a discussion with you guys at that time.
Masi. Oral questions. Member for Yellowknife North.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yes, we will be happy to work with the Minister and his department when the time comes.
Mr. Speaker, it is Small Business Week. It's a great time to champion local and northern businesses. One of the things that has been identified as a challenge in recent weeks and months is that a number of our standing offer agreements, in fact, have a number of southern companies that are on the list. Northern companies find that to be challenging in order to get access. I appreciate that it's a public offering process, but will the Minister and will the department give some consideration to, let's say, having southern firms must partner with northern firms in order to get a standing offer agreement with the Government of the Northwest Territories? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
That's a discussion maybe I'm going to have to sit down and have with the chair of standing committee, because this is something that I haven't found to be an issue. It's a public offering. We have the list. A number of these people are quite capable and, you know, there are some specific things, specific asks, I believe, in that request of stuff. There are certain entrepreneurs in the Northwest Territories who aren't quite capable of doing these specific things. It's a tool that the Government of Northwest Territories has to be able to address some of those situations we have here. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Masi. Oral questions. Member for Frame Lake.
