Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Unfortunately, I cannot vote in favour of this motion. I will be abstaining. The Department of ITI is doing a lot of the work that’s asked of this motion. I don’t think that it realistically would be possible to set up this sort of branch in the Northwest Territories. Antwerp is the major hub in Europe that deals with diamonds and Botswana is the next one. That’s because we only provide roughly 15 percent of the world’s diamonds. I think this would be a very bad move if we give direction to ITI to follow through with this. Long term I think it would hurt the Northwest Territories. Right now I think we do very well and the diamonds that are provided in the Northwest Territories are not taken advantage of. I think that needs to be followed through with. For that reason I cannot support this.
Frederick Blake Jr. on Motion 8-17(4): Secondary Diamond Industry, Carried
In the Legislative Assembly on March 12th, 2013. See this statement in context.
Motion 8-17(4): Secondary Diamond Industry, Carried
Motions
March 11th, 2013
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