Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I would like to first start off by speaking about something that ties in with the newer employment strategy. That was the statement made by the Honourable Charles Dent on the 28th of May which was, Working Together Providing Opportunities for Students and Youth, and that did not have enough credit given to it at that time, which is part of a job strategy. That two part program was aimed at helping post secondary and senior high school students in their search for summer work. I keep hearing in this House how the Members are interested in helping students get work. I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate the Honourable Charles Dent for that initiative and the department. I know that myself and Mr. Miltenberger and Mr. Erasmus were involved in trying to get something up on the student and youth program. I congratulate the Minister on that.
On the Northern Employment Strategy. Mr. Chairman, in my region of the Northwest Territories, the Baffin region, we have the highest unemployment rate in the Northwest Territories. The Northern Employment Strategy will go a long ways in helping us alleviate some of the chronic unemployment problems that we have by the initiatives announced by the Minister. Over the past 15 months, I have continually asked and criticized this government for not having a job strategy and it is time to congratulate the government on actually coming up with a plan to put people to work. Over the last 15 months we have dealt with deficits and reductions and bad news and I think this is a good news program and plan. The government itself should be congratulated and I would also like to take this opportunity to acknowledge that myself and Mr. Erasmus and again Mr. Miltenberger were part of the working group on the Northern Employment Strategy that helped put this together.
For example, in the Baffin region, the Business Development Fund was targeted at $334,400. Under this new initiative, there will be an extra $1.49 million put into the Baffin region. That is commendable. On the grants to communities, there was $75,000 for the Baffin region. That has gone up to $150,000. The Community Initiatives Program was $469,100. That has gone up to a little over $1.1 million.
In a place where we have 50 to 60 percent unemployment, this can only mean good news. It will hopefully create some long lasting employment opportunities. Specifically for me in the constituency of Iqaluit, I am very pleased to see that one of the major items here was the restructuring of the Community Futures Program to rebase and refinance the loan fund to a tune of about $400,000. That is commendable. On infrastructure, Iqaluit had been budgeted for $146,428. We are now going to receive $252,589. Under community empowerment there was nothing budgeted last year. This year we have about $80,000. Again, I would like to congratulate the government for that initiative.
The honourable Member for Hay River talked earlier about creating the climate for job creation. Over the past several years and months we have seen the provincial, as well as the federal government, begin to move away from government being the engine that drives job creation and moving into a situation where governments are trying to create a climate for economic development. That finally seems to be taking hold here in the Northwest Territories. I guess one of the knocks on the territories has also been that since we are funded, we become wards of the state. We are trying to show that by stimulating infrastructure money and community empowerment money, as well as putting more money into loans programs that could help foster small business, we are moving into the direction that mainstream Canada has been moving in the past couple of years. That is a very good situation.
But it is not all rosy, Mr. Chairman. There are some criticisms that could be laid on the program. Having been part of the program that developed this strategy, I guess I could have had more input or had seen more input on longer term job creation and also for training. One of the skills level training out there. We tried to get people to complete grade 11 and grade 12 and hopefully get post secondary education and then what happens is that they would be able to hopefully enter the workplace. There was very little in our Northern Employment Strategy to help facilitate that and that was a shortcoming. Some of the targets that we have are going to be hard to quantify and I think we are going to have to revisit the quantification of the allocation of funds based on the monies and the allocations that have been made. I think that would be a fair criticism.
I do also note Madam Chairperson that the "have not" regions of the territories seem to have benefitted from the Northern Employment Strategy announced by the honourable chairman of the Financial Management Board on the 28th of May. It does cause some trepidation for myself to be giving constructive accolades to that individual Minister but I think that in this case that they are warranted to the government.
Now one of the main thrusts of the employment strategy, as outlined on page five, was that communities will now be held accountable for the outcomes of their employment strategies and we talk about the achievable targets that have been identified. I think the achievable targets were set a bit lower. We lowballed them a little bit. Thank you, Mr. O'Brien for that.
Thank you again Mr. O'Brien. Mr. O'Brien is telling me that he agrees with what I am saying and is very pleased to see that, in his riding, that the increase of 42 percent over last year's expenditure will help the unemployed too.