The honourable Minister responsible for Transportation, Mr. Yakeleya.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to say to the Member for Kam Lake that he has been very persistent in this area, as have other Members from Yellowknife. On this specific project there’s an estimated number right now of $7 million to build this road. I’ve very happy that the Department of Transportation and the City of Yellowknife have reached an agreement on an MOU to construct the bypass road from Highway No. 3 to the Kam Lake area.

I thank the Minister for that. Again, I thank the Members who have supported this project along the way, and also the City of Yellowknife for their patience in all of this.

I’m just wondering again: how much money is the GNWT actually contributing to the Kam Lake bypass road?

As I said before, the agreement has been reached by the department and the city. The negotiations took some time to complete, and then the agreement of the MOU, which states the terms of the financial agreement. Fifty per cent of the estimated $7 million is coming from the GNWT.

The $3.5 million the Minister talks of coming from the GNWT, is that from the Building Canada Fund? My understanding is that the City of Yellowknife is paying $3.5 million and the Building Canada Fund is paying $3.5 million. I thank the department and the Minister for brokering the deal, but how come the GNWT is not involved in this financially?

I do appreciate the thanks from the Member. The bill cannot fund the project, having not been approved yet. The lead Minister is working with his counterparts to conclude those financial arrangements.

We are anticipating this will be a project that will go ahead. The funds will begin through the department to work with the City of Yellowknife in terms of building this important bypass road.

Final supplementary, Mr. Ramsay.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I wonder if the Minister has any idea when and how the federal funding from the Building Canada Fund is going to flow through this department and to the City of Yellowknife so they can leverage their $3.5 million, and get this road started and constructed.

Once we have signed the final funding arrangements with the Government of Canada, through the Building Canada Fund project, then the lead Minister would

renegotiate the project. Certainly the department would be on side with the lead Minister in terms of concluding these important projects we see from the Northwest Territories.

The honourable Member for Hay River South, Mrs. Groenewegen.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As I brought up in my Member’s statement, I have questions about what the government’s plans are for our Business Incentive Policy. I understand that Minister Bob McLeod, with ITI, is going to be putting together an options paper to look at that.

I feel like I’m having déjà vu, because it feels like every government I have been involved in has tried to figure out a way to kill the BIP. Then ensued a very long and heated debate, and then a decision not to do it — for very good and sound reasons, I might add.

Someone has already alluded to the grandfathered nature of our BIP under the free-trade and interprovincial trade agreement. If we do away with it, we will not get it back in its current form. I think it is important that we look very seriously at this. Now, I’d like to say, Go out and do extensive consultation, but I happen to know that just a very few short years ago we went out and did very extensive consultation at a fairly good price. I would like to ask the.... At that time, I should say there was an agreement to set up a monitoring program to monitor the BIP for three years so that a cost-benefit analysis could be done. What is the status of that monitoring and that report?

Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. The honourable Minister responsible for Industry, Tourism and Investment, Mr. Bob McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We have set in place a contacts registry, which makes for a very transparent contracting and tendering process. That registry has been in place for four years, and so we will be tabling a report in the next week or so.

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Michael McLeod’s comments in his Ministerial statement yesterday has already generated a lot of questions out there in the public. Prior to the budget session I had been asked by several constituents if there was anything coming up on the BIP. I assured them there was not, in terms of the reductions exercise. So, Mr. Speaker, I would like to know: is this proposal to have BIP eliminated on capital projects imminent? Is it something that is already decided? Is it just something being contemplated? Where are we at in the process of making any kind of a decision about that, and where was the participation from this side of the House?

The question with regard to the BIP was raised on several occasions. The Premier raised it in his budget speech. It was a prominent piece of budget speech. A briefing was provided to the Standing Committee on Priorities and Planning, I believe, in which the review of the infrastructure was presented as well as the matter of the business incentive program. The committee has completed a report and has recommended that the Business Incentive Policy be rescinded, and I have been tasked with developing options to see how we can do that.

Just to be clear, when the Minister said that the Priorities and Planning Committee was briefed, well, first of all, I don’t remember that. There might have been one line on one slide. But quite apart from that, when he says the committee made a recommendation to rescind the Business Incentive Policy, let’s be very clear: that is not a standing committee from this side of the House. That’s one of the Ministerial committees — let’s make that clear, Mr. Speaker — in which we are not invited to participate, correct?

I would like to ask the Minister, so that people out there understand, how much money do you think you could save by rescinding the Business Incentive Policy versus how much money you think it would cost us in terms of lost revenue, taxes, jobs, people? How much would it cost versus how much we are going to lose?

We talked about the contracts registry earlier and, according to the contracts registry, the premium for 2007–08 is $220,000, approximately. The fact that this premium is so low reflects on the fact that we have had significant departure of businesses from the Northwest Territories; the fact that there is no competition on contracts and tendering; the fact that with large capital projects we are lucky if we have one or two companies bidding on them, which has resulted in significantly large bids, some as much as 100 per cent over estimates of costs. That is the nature of what we are trying to deal with, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Final supplementary, Mrs. Groenewegen.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I see this is going to be another long and protracted debate on this topic. Having the departure of businesses out of the North and having such a low premium, as indicated by the amount of $220,000, businesses have left and gone south. So why don’t we get rid of the BIP and then we’ll just get rid of the BIP for the rest of the businesses. We’ll send the rest of them south. The rationale for this is not sound.

What kind of consultation is going to take place prior to any decision being made about the Business Incentive Policy? I would also like to ask the Minister.... Well, I’ll just leave it at that. That’s one question. What kind of consultation is going to take place? Oh, the other thing is, is it going to affect, right now.... Is it anticipated to affect all contracts or just capital project contracts?

I just received direction to look at options yesterday, and I expect the process will be taking place for several months. We are looking for at least 2009–10. I don’t think we’re looking at eliminating our preference policies totally. We want to maintain our local and northern purchasing, and we want to find ways for truly northern businesses to benefit from government spending. As such, we will be looking at ways to provide incentives so that truly northern businesses can benefit.

I think that another aspect is that when you look at the businesses, we have about 1,200 BIP businesses, and 76 per cent of the BIP businesses are located in the larger regional centres. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, but what I’m saying is we have to find a way so that the businesses in the smaller communities can access these contracts. We will be looking at that as well.

The honourable Member for Inuvik Twin Lakes, Mr. Robert McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I was pleased to see in the Finance Minister’s Budget Address that the budget for seniors’ supplementary benefit was being increased by $155,000. I’d like to direct my questions today, if I could, to the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment. I’d like to ask him: of the $155,000, what’s the overall budget figure for the senior citizens’ supplementary benefit?

The honourable Minister responsible for Education, Culture and Employment, Mr. Lafferty.

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. That seniors’ supplementary benefit for 2008–2009 means there’s $2.575 million today.