Thank you.
Thank you for the invitation to appear this morning. My name is Colette Acheson. I'm the executive director of the Whitehorse Chamber of Commerce.
I know you will have already received a comprehensive submission from the Canadian Chamber of Commerce on most of the larger issues, so I will focus my thoughts today on concerns that are closer to home for us in the north.
The chamber has been involved for many years, almost 15 years that I'm aware of, in developing and delivering a number of training and support resources to the business community in and around Whitehorse. That is typically a partnership, with some funding from our economic development department in the Yukon, and some funding from CanNor. Although we've seen cycles and there were times when things were easier and more complicated, in general, of those three partners that take part in pulling those things together, CanNor is often the weakest link, due to what looks like a complicated internal approval process and instability of funding. Even as recently as spring 2018, I believe, the CanNor programs were under review, so for those of us who are delivering programs to improve the economic infrastructure of businesses in the north, that's a bit of an axe hanging over our heads.
We would encourage the federal government to consider making CanNor a permanent part of the annual budget and, if possible, to look at multi-year programming or multi-year budget agreements and a simplified internal process.
Thank you.