Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, we have a business incentive policy that has been in place for a number of years and it has served northern businesses very well. I think right now we are still under the current business incentive policy. There are provisions in the policy itself to identify businesses that have applied to be under this policy, and the business has to comply with the legal requirements to carry out business in the Northwest Territories. So they have to be a legal business entity and registered as such.
Also, to be under this policy, there are a number of criteria that these businesses have to follow. There is quite an extensive qualification list. There is the application and we have a committee that reviews all the different applications. There is a senior management preference committee that is like an advisory committee that reviews these different businesses that apply.
So there is a criteria that we follow and the main ingredient here is that if a limited company with at least 51 percent of a company's voting shares is owned by northern residents then they qualify. That is one of them. There are a number of other criteria, but we do have tools within the current business incentive policy to look at all these different businesses and to determine whether they are following the criteria.
Furthermore, the department has a list of all the different companies that have registered under the business incentive policy, and if they are registered under the business incentive policy then they follow the northern business qualifications according to the policy. So they are indeed northern businesses under this policy.
That percentage is owned by whom is something that we have to look at. There are some companies that have been grandfathered in, fairly large corporations have been grandfathered in in this policy as well. So we have a number of different companies that may be huge corporations that do other business in the south, but if they are under this policy then they are also a northern business. Thank you.