Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Our Minister of Industry, Tourism and Investment opened up his comments today, mentioning that small businesses and entrepreneurs are the backbone of our community and regional economies. It is no more prevalent than in the community of Inuvik. It is getting to that time of year again when the Peel River and the Mackenzie River start to freeze up and it starts putting a little bit of a delay and backlog into the delivery of goods and services up into the Beaufort-Delta regional centre and into the communities.
Today I want to talk about small business, especially in the community of Inuvik, during those freeze-up and breakup times with the ferry operations. Speaking to some of the business owners in Inuvik, there was a concern, and a growing concern, of the ferry operations up in the Beaufort-Delta region during the freeze-up and the breakup, and I do understand that the amount of days that the ferry wasn’t in operation was less than if we waited for the ice road to go in or if we waited for the breakup to happen; however, a ferry in the middle of the river moving at a snail’s pace doesn’t mean it is operating. There are a lot of businesses that said, during the ferry operations they were waiting for the goods while it was on the other side of the river, and basing their orders on the fact that we were supposed to have the ferry operations open for a longer period of time.
Today I want to talk about how we help our businesses in Inuvik. How is the Department of Transportation going to communicate some of this information in terms of the ferry operation, because of the time it is going to get the trucks and the vehicles across the ice crossings so that we get the services and the goods on the shelves in our stores and the services into the community?
There are a few issues that are raised here, and I will have questions for the Minister of Transportation. But like I mentioned, these businesses are integral to the local economy, to the region, and I feel like we need to have their support there for our small businesses, so that they can continue to operate and they can continue to make the revenue that they need to pay the bills and continue to provide the services up in the community of Inuvik. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
