Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, there are around 100 people in Hay River and Enterprise who are employed in the manufacturing sector. While Hay River is undoubtedly the heart of manufacturing in the territory, the sector is also growing in Yellowknife and Inuvik. In fact, since the economic crash in 2009, manufacturing has been growing every year and has more than doubled its share of the GDP. It continues to create dozens of new jobs yearly and sometimes monthly.
In the NWT, we manufacture modular homes, modular buildings, windows, doors, cabinetry, trusses, signs, fiberglass tanks, steel tanks, tank stands, screw jacks, bridges, and pretty much anything that can be welded together. Do you need a custom-designed and fabricated water truck, a picker truck, a winch truck, a plow, deck, vacuum, roll-off, or fuel delivery truck? We do that, too. And, Mr. Speaker, the list goes on. I'm told that we even manufacture diamonds.
We should all know by now that we cannot continue to be so utterly reliant on the mining industry. The diamond mines have limited lifespans, and projects to replace them are not even on the horizon. While I’m sure such projects are an inevitability, the fact that we are at the edge of an economic precipice is proof that we need to be more proactive and aggressive in our development of other industries.
That’s precisely why this Assembly voted unanimously to include in the mandate of this government, the commitment that the 18th Legislative Assembly will lead economic diversification in the NWT by investing in manufacturing and a commitment to develop a northern manufacturing strategy.
This will be no small task, Mr. Speaker. There are numerous barriers to growth that we have to overcome. The North is not like the rest of Canada. Our climate, energy costs, lack of infrastructure, and skills gap will require serious investment from this government and will require multiple departments to get out of their silos and work together.
I will give credit where it is due. Members of this Cabinet have made concerted efforts to advance manufacturing, and those efforts have resulted in dozens and dozens of jobs. Those efforts have also exposed many of the barriers faced by entrepreneurs, many of them bureaucratic. The good news, Mr. Speaker, is that those barriers can be removed. That is one reason why a manufacturing strategy is so important. I look forward to working with the Government in the development of this strategy, to helping put even more people to work.
I will have questions for the Minister of ITI at the appropriate time. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.