Thank you, Madam Chairperson. Could the Minister or the deputy minister make an attempt to meet with his regional directors who are responsible for public works in the regions because I think one of the concerns I hear from a lot of the local businesses, is because they do not have access to the regional directors which puts them at a disadvantage, say in a case of Aklavik, if you are not able to walk into the regional director's office and have access to knowledge that certain contracts are coming out at a certain time, which is basically only privy to the regional centres, which is not posted in all communities, that the regional directors who are responsible in each region make an attempt to travel to all of the communities and meet with each of these business people, such as KLR Plumbing in Aklavik, so they know that these individuals are in the community, know who these individuals are, know the name of Richard Storr and who the individual is and also know what he can provide.
For some reason in my region it seems like the BIP process got chucked out the window and that only the regional centres are taking advantage of all the government contracts. The people in the communities are struggling to get contracts out of this government. There is something wrong with the system and I believe the system is people having access to certain offices in the region, while community businesses do not have this access on a day-to-day basis. I think in order to expand the knowledge or the accessibility of these individuals to the communities and start promoting themselves in the community, who they are, and exactly what department they represent, and know who the business community members are in our small communities, this may be one way of avoiding this problem. It always seems like it is left up to, you keep referring to BIP, sole source and all these other contracts but it does not take a genius to figure out where most of these contracts are being issued. Yet there are not too many of these being issued in my riding. When you see a company having to fly from Inuvik to go to Aklavik to fix a furnace, and then fly back to Inuvik where you have an individual in a community who can do just as good a job and do it in a couple of hours instead of having to jump on a plane and charter to Aklavik and charter back after they maintain a furnace does not make economic sense. I believe this government has to spend more time and effort promoting and assisting local entrepreneurs in our communities to stimulate the local economy of those smaller communities and I strongly believe that is not happening so, I would like to ask the Minister if there is a possibility of this happening within his department and to promote those regional directors so they are made aware who these entrepreneurs are.