I’m glad that the Minister had mentioned that it is up to the various departments, because I have written letters to three different departments, and it feels that my letters of support do fall on deaf ears. The appropriate Ministers need to be held accountable and also work with the members in the small communities that need this work, especially in Inuvik where our local businesses are losing contracts, and my letters of support, I feel, aren’t being looked at legitimately.

I’d like to ask the Minister if he would create, possibly reviewing this BIP policy, a policy for affirmative action, like we do within our Human Resources Department for northern businesses, an affirmative action policy that looks at northern businesses first before they look and review any other southern contractors that want to do business up here.