Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I rise today to highlight an issue that has been forwarded to me this morning. I won’t be quoting from the Globe and Mail, but it was a story in the Globe and Mail on October 14th . The story headline reads,
“Skilled Immigrants Staff Sudbury Gem Plant.” It’s a story about Crossworks Manufacturing that is now cutting diamonds in Sudbury. They have 27 workers in Ontario, and that would be Ontario’s only diamond cutting facility, and they’re certainly cutting DeBeers diamonds at Canada’s Victor Diamond Mine near James Bay.
This story highlights about the fact that the Victor Mine is expected to produce $25 million in diamonds this year. This diamond mine agreement has given Crossworks 10 percent of their annual production to cut diamonds.
Ontario has said they want to be the new international diamond pipeline. That is their position now for Canada, that diamonds run through there.
Crossworks expects to also train local students at the Sudbury local college to learn how to cut diamonds. Something’s clearly going wrong.
Ontario appears to have rolled out the red carpet for both cutting works and industry, and I’m worried what’s going to happen here. Clearly, the NWT diamonds are no longer the only game in town.
I question, what is the NWT’s diamond strategy? Has it ever considered a plan B when the diamond market opens up somewhere else in Canada? I’ve said for years that Israel has no diamonds, Antwerp has no diamonds, yet they’ve always found a way to make sure that they are truly the world market player for diamonds. Why hasn’t the Northwest Territories taken on the position of becoming the leader for North American diamonds? It’s slowly falling out of our hands.
I will have questions for the Premier today, but this story in the Globe and Mail puts into question the viability of the NWT being able to cut diamonds and produce skilled workers to do this job. Are we losing our edge? Will the polar bear diamond be an endangered species? I don’t know. But I’ll have questions for the Premier today to make sure that our government is looking into this problem and asking ourselves clearly what is happening on this issue and what are we doing about it.