I’m not sure where that $140 million is coming from, but I can provide that information to the Member. I need to go back to my department to get the actual figures of the negotiated contract, if that’s a negotiated contract in the community of Inuvik. We need to have that information before us to know if it’s $140 million or if it’s another number.

Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. The honourable Member for Kam Lake, Mr. Ramsay.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have questions today getting back to my Member’s statement from earlier to the Minister of ITI. Earlier I was talking about the new SEED program and how, in my estimation, it’s the old BDF and Grants to Small Business dressed up under a new name called SEED, topped up with some dollars.

The first question I have for the Minister is: has ITI got any targets for the SEED program, and how are we going to measure success from that program and that additional funding?

Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. The honourable Minister of Industry, Tourism and Investment, Mr. Bob McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Using the Member’s example, not only did we give it a new paint job; we added a new fuel efficient engine with some new tires.

The BDF has been one of our best and most successful vehicles to assist small business. The new SEED policy…. We didn’t establish targets, because we needed to provide funding on an

application basis to different regions. We will continue to measure it based on jobs that are created and the number of businesses that are started up.

As long as we’re not using that new vehicle the Minister talks about by putting a couple of crash test dummies in and smashing it against the wall.

Mr. Speaker, I want to ask the Minister why the government continues its reluctance to move toward a one window model to provide support, loans and programming to businesses for economic development in our territory.

The BDIC was only put into effect approximately four years ago. The SEED policy we just introduced on September 2, 2008. We still feel that a protocol arrangement between ITI and BDIC is the way to go. It gives us the greatest flexibility, the greatest ability to meet the needs of our clients, which are the small businesses of the Northwest Territories.

I want to ask the Minister if he knows how many businesses have been created or started up in the small communities. I’m speaking specifically of communities outside regional centres. How many of those have received business start-up funding in the past ten years, and how many are still in existence? Can the Minister commit to getting us that level of detail?

The Support to Entrepreneurs and Economic Development policy program has been established, is geared to the smaller communities and is based on the consultations that we undertook. I’ll be pleased to provide the annual reports to the Member that would indicate how many businesses were started up in these small communities.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Final supplementary, Mr. Ramsay.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My thoughts on this are that with the SEED program, the $2.5 million…. We can take that out and scatter it around the territory, but if we’re not looking at the cost of doing business in the small communities — and I’m speaking specifically about utility costs and personnel costs and the costs of operating a business day to day — then we’re really not supporting economic activity in our territory.

I’d like to ask the Minister: whether it’s BDIC or whether it’s his department, has anybody gone out and looked at the cost of actually doing business in a small community so that we can get some real economic activity happening in our small communities?

I think we should give the SEED policy an opportunity to operate, at least for a short period of time, maybe for a year or so. The whole express purpose for setting up the new SEED policy was what we heard in consultation. What we heard from small businesses in level 2 and level 3 communities indicated that this is what they needed to be successful, and that’s how this whole SEED policy program has been designed and set up. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Oral questions. The honourable Member for Mackenzie Delta, Mr. Krutko.

Thank you, Mr. Krutko. The Hon. Premier, Minister Roland.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The motions of this House do carry weight. We review our options on an annual basis and weigh out, with the funding available, what projects can proceed.

On a specific gravel source to Aklavik, the Member raised this issue with me, as well, in the last session. I sat down with the Ministers on our side and committed them to work with the Member in the

community. I understand the appropriate Ministers went into Aklavik this summer, had a meeting, and there were ongoing discussions there. There was a commitment to look at, as the Member pointed out, through the Building Canada Fund, the research and development portion of that as one of the possible avenues of trying to do some preliminary engineering work.

Mr. Speaker, in the meeting that the Premier mentioned in Aklavik, there was a commitment for $50,000 for the committee to begin its work to develop a report so that they can look at the alignment of the access road and the gravel source itself. They would develop a proposal and bring it forward so that we can be able to access the federal infrastructure funding with a proposal moving forward to Ottawa.

I’d like to ask the Premier: is he aware if that commitment has been lived up to in regard to the $50,000 for the committee and the departments to develop that report?

I am aware that the department is working with the community. I understand, in fact, that a meeting will be held in the community next week, I believe on the 15th of

October, to have further discussion in this area. At that point, they’ll have to decide how they can move this further ahead.

Mr. Speaker, as we all know, access for our communities, but more importantly access to gravel sources, is fundamental, especially to communities that are prone to flooding. With global warming these challenges are going to get worse before they are going to get better. We are seeing more and more floods every year. Communities are being affected; forest fires…. I think that as a government we do have to be proactive, reactive. So I’d like to ask the Premier: would he commit to ensure that we have something ready to go to the federal government, hopefully no later than December?

Mr. Speaker, the Building Canada Fund process is in the system with the Minister responsible for the infrastructure department, Minister Michael McLeod. He committed, through the process, to continue to do this work. I can’t say if we’ll have something absolutely in place by December. The next number of meetings that need to occur between the Department of Transportation and the community are going to be the critical ones to look at how they would proceed on the preliminary engineering and scope of project and at that point decide how they would fund that.

Thank you, Mr. Roland. Final supplementary, Mr. Krutko.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to get a commitment from the Premier that at least somewhere in going forward we’re looking at a business planning process, pre-budget estimates, capital estimates. I’d like to see somewhere in that picture that there will be mention of the Aklavik access road in the capital project, in future years or whatever. But at least I want to see a name that shows up in the books. Is that a possibility, that we can look at the $50,000 that’s being expended through that infrastructure funding going forward with future capital amounts being listed?

Mr. Speaker, the department is going to work with the community. They’re talking about trying to come up with the funds through the research and development portion of the Building Canada Fund, and that work will be ongoing.

As for me committing to taking a project and putting it into the plan, we know that we work with Members of the Assembly through the business plan process, and I wouldn’t say that I personally or as Premier could put a project in there without proper consultation.

I think this work we talked about is going to help us prepare for the next stage, and that is research development to come up with the preliminary work. Through that process we’ll be able to identify how we could move this forward and when, in what year, it would be able to flow and what dollars we could find attached to it. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Roland. The honourable Member for Frame Lake, Ms. Bisaro.