Mr. Speaker, my questions are to the Minister of Finance. The loan that one of the Members was mentioning is with Discovery Air. With our small government and with so many demands that we’ve heard in the last couple of years, especially in the last couple of months, especially in our small communities, why are we willing to risk $34 million on a high-risk loan to a company which indications show through financial reports was close to bankruptcy? Why did we do this?

Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. Honourable Minister of Finance, Mr. Miltenberger.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. This fund is a federal Immigrant Investor Fund. We have an agreement with the federal government. We have agreed to back that guarantee, all the money in that fund. So any money that we lend, we have to be prepared to repay. This is not a grant fund. This is not a low-risk, low-value fund. We’re accountable for every cent. So we have the opportunity here. Due diligence indicated to us that it was, in fact, a tolerable risk that we’re prepared to take, given these tight economic times. The value added that it brought to the Territory is a good investment: $13 million in interest, or so; the jobs and the families and the headquarters moving north. The fund still

exists. It’s for applications over $2 million. Below $2 million we have the BDIC fund, which is there for the specific purposes of working for small businesses in communities. Thank you.

Just on the due diligence that was done, due diligence was paid by Discovery Air. This is a loan that I think we should discuss with the Government of the Northwest Territories. This company is located in London, Ontario. The acquisition of loan is to pay out in Quebec. The Calgary helicopter base is closed.

My question to the Minister is, what are we really getting out of this high-risk move in terms of people in the Northwest Territories that see this $34 million bailout, investment, loan, whatever we call it? What are we really getting out of this high-risk move for the people in the Northwest Territories in our small communities?

Mr. Speaker, the due diligence was done by independent third parties that the Government of the Northwest Territories picked. The bill was sent as part of the deal to Discovery Air to pick up that tab, that they were hired by us and work for us. That was part of the arrangement.

What we get out of this, Mr. Speaker, in a very tight economic situation where we’ve had slowdowns at the mines, layoffs at Laurelton Diamond polishers. What we have is assistance and a good business investment to a business that has a strong name and presence and employs hundreds of people, that has business arrangements up and down the valley, that’s going to bring some jobs to the North -- value-added in those ways -- a helicopter school, which runs during the summer months as well. When we looked at all the pieces in the context that we currently are in, the decision was made that this was a good investment. Thank you.

Certainly, I can argue for a lot of good business in the Northwest Territories that could certainly be welcomed to see this type of Opportunities Fund to come to their availability to talk about jobs, employment. These are home-grown, northern aboriginal people in our regions that would certainly welcome this type of opportunity. My question is, are there any other proposals in play for accessing this Opportunities Fund? If so, what processes are involved that require Regular Members on this side to have some of their consultation, decision, input in terms of this new policy? Certainly, this didn’t happen with Discovery Air and that’s why this deal doesn’t look very good of what they’re hearing in the public.

There are some proposals that I understand are there. I’m not aware of any firm one currently being considered at

this point. The intention, as we have moved from the passive to an active fund, is to make sure that the policies and procedures that used to guide that passive approach are updated to reflect a more active role we want to take, and the fact that the money that’s there, how do we make sure that it’s best put to use in a secure way that’s going to make sure that we can repay what the federal government is going to give us. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Final supplementary, Mr. Yakeleya.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Part of the requirements, I understand that a society has to be set up to manage and administrate the funds here. My understanding from ITI, the Honourable Robert McLeod, was in terms of the revisions of a policy that would look at...Would the policy look at forming a society as part of the directors? Would you see directors being involved in the input? Can we see some regional input in terms of the society?

Mr. Speaker, the funds that previously existed -- Aurora I and II, I understand -- had a more arm’s-length board structure. In this case, given the passive nature of the fund, we will take a look at the structure as well as the move of adjusting the policies that are there for the passive approach, bringing them into line with the reactive approach. The issue of the board structure has not been finally dealt with. We do have the current structure at this point to keep us going in the interim. Thank you.

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

I have some questions for the Minister of Industry, Tourism and Investment, Minister McLeod, and it gets back again to the Opportunities Fund. I want to stand up here today and say that I’m not trying to beat up Discovery Air. They provide valuable service to our residents here. They contribute a great deal to our economy. It’s not Discovery Air that I have an issue with, Mr. Speaker, it’s the process that allowed the government to lend money without any oversight or accountability. Like I said earlier, I’d be phoning the Auditor General of Canada to look after that aspect of it.

The question I have for the Minister of ITI is, I do believe -- and it’s easy to ask questions. We want to work with you. We want to come up with creative ways so we can stimulate the northern economy. I’d like to ask the Minister what type of ways will the Minister of ITI engage Regular Members in a

discussion on how we can stimulate the local economy here in the Northwest Territories.

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

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We would like to work very closely with the committee as well. I’ve written to the chair of the standing committee and advised her of our decision on the most recent proposal, and indicated to her that we will be working with the committee and whatever other parties that we feel should be consulted with to develop investment policies and revised procedures. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, again it gets tiresome asking questions, asking questions. We want to be fully engaged with the Minister and with the government so that we can move some things forward here. This Opportunities Fund, the more I look at it, an opportunity here for us as a government to stimulate our economy would be to borrow some of this money ourselves and invest it in businesses here in the Northwest Territories, and get to work on stimulating our economy. Instead, decisions are being made without our input that we have to question. You know, we have to stand up here and question. It’s that adversarial and antagonistic thing that I don’t...You know, I’m starting to get really tired of that. I want to work with these guys. Will they work with us? Thank you.

Certainly, we’re very pleased and we want to continue to work with the committees. One of the things that we’ve looked at is investing the money in the government business programs. This is another area that we can look at, recognizing that the loans programs that we have with the government, there’s a loss ratio of about 14 to 20 percent loss, which we have to come to this Assembly to write off, so we take that into consideration.

We’d be very pleased to continue to work with the standing committees. We also have the Ministerial Advisory Panel on the Economy that we will be consulting with on all of our business programs and on how we deal with the economy.

I’d like to ask the Minister if it would be possible for the Government of the Northwest Territories to access a portion of that Opportunities Fund to set up a program that would stimulate local business here in the Northwest Territories. Is that a possibility and if it is, can we get to work on that immediately?

Other jurisdictions in this country are working diligently on propping up their economies and doing things in hard times that make some sense, and we

should be doing the same here. Right now, I don’t think we’re doing enough and that might be an opportunity to get something done. Thank you.

The loan that we’re talking about is a northern company that we’ve invested in. We’re very pleased to and what we are trying to do is use that fund for that. We would be very pleased to work with the committee to do exactly that.

I should point out that the Opportunities Fund is funded through the Immigrant Investment Program and the $400,000 that was invested by the immigrants has to be repaid within five years. The type of investments that we think would work best are companies that can pay a fairly high rate of interest, that can pay it all back within a five-year period. Also, the federal government charges 7 percent on the money. They take it right off the top.

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

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The process right now...I mean, really there isn’t a process, but what there is is not fair and it’s not transparent. What I’m saying is we need to come up with something that’s fair to everybody in the Northwest Territories. Like I said, it’s nothing against Discovery Air. I know they’re a good company. I know they’re going to do everything they can to pay this off at the end of four years. The fact remains, though, that we have to do more for other businesses and in this process that’s there, it just isn’t fair. That’s what people are saying and that’s what people want to have addressed. So I’d like to ask the Minister again, while we haven’t had a discussion on what sectors of our economy may be even more important than others, can we have that discussion? If we have to pay a bit of a premium on the interest rates to get some stimulus package out there for our residents, maybe that’s a discussion that we should have, but we should have it together, Mr. Speaker, not just Cabinet making decisions like this. It should all be all of us making these decisions together. Thank you.

We want to work with the standing committees and we also want to get out very quickly so we can find a way to come up with a revised investment policy that’s transparent, that meets everybody’s requirements, because we’d like to get this money out there and working. So we’ll get out there quickly to get it to the stage whereby we can get the money working. We definitely want to work with the Members.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The honourable Member for Weledeh, Mr. Bromley.

My question is for the Minister of Housing. As I mentioned in my statement, energy costs are down right now. We have an opportunity to move on this, and move in ways that keep energy costs down in the long run for us. One, of course, is the Housing Program, a cost-shared program. Housing has committed to doing an evaluation of a sample of houses to determine requirements to bring them up to meet the EnerGuide for Houses 80 standard. Given the recognition of a need for an economic stimulus and the availability of federal dollars not matching funds, will dollars be accelerated and the program be accelerated so those assessments, which were planned over a year, I believe, could be done very quickly and we can get on to actually reducing energy requirements through those renovations? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Honourable Minister responsible for the Housing Corporation, Mr. Michael McLeod.