Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I would like to raise some concern about the policies and actions of our government regarding the secondary diamond industry and see if we can find out where this government is going with regard to supporting this increasingly valuable industry.
In 1998, Mr. Speaker, a policy framework called Support to the Diamond Processing and Manufacturing Policy was approved, and since then, our government has been very aggressive on trying to build a secondary diamond industry, get some value from this resource, particularly since we don't get any direct royalty benefit from it, at least not yet, Mr. Speaker.
We've achieved a number of good things here. The Department of Education is to be congratulated for the world-renowned cutting and polishing courses it has developed. In 2002, our government certified the first Canadian Arctic diamond and launched a web site to promote this product. Industry has also shown its optimism by making investments here. Government has provided loan guarantees to help develop a secondary industry. Some of it has been very risky, very expensive, and some of it hasn't worked, but that's the cost of doing development.
We are also recognizing the tourism opportunities through another report called the Perfect Setting: Diamond Tourism in the NWT. We have the Rare in Nature campaign, and the National Round Table on Diamonds
was hosted in Yellowknife, Mr. Speaker and an action plan for the Diamond Strategy was unveiled.
You know, we seem to be having some second thoughts about a few things of late, Mr. Speaker. What was known as the diamond projects unit has been shut down and functions of it have been dispersed. In 2005, the Minister intended to withdraw and release official marks that we worked very hard to do so. He has since backtracked on that. We've also decided, Mr. Speaker, after showing tremendous leadership nationally, to withdraw from the National Diamond Strategy.
So while we have made great progress in obtaining some benefits from the secondary diamond industry, we are getting signals here that we don't really know where we are going. That's what I am going to be asking the Minister about later on today. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
---Applause