Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Absolutely. Thank you for the opportunity of being a witness this evening. I will do a brief introduction, and then Mr. Runyon will read through our presentation. We're here to say that business in the north is not an easy task. I joined the Chamber of Commerce five years ago a

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Absolutely. In the labour market here, we have at this time over 1,100 people on EI and about 850 people on social assistance. The SA wall in Yukon is around the $40,000 to $42,000 mark. It's very difficult to get these people back into the workforce. The chamber has been working

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Yes, the program we've been trying to work on with the Yukon government uses the head start program, which provides top-up funding for social assistance clients. We have several that we're experimenting with right now where a social assistance client would be partnered with a bus

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Do you mean the need for labour? Yes, but it isn't necessarily by Skills Canada. We are certainly consulted often by the business community for their needs. They come to the chamber, probably on a daily basis, asking where they can get some reliable employees.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  No.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Over the years, we have participated with Skills Canada with their competitions. We've had talks with them, but we haven't been at the table seriously talking about labour market issues. We have with the Yukon government and we have with business. We have surveyed businesses to

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Yes, at the entry level we would have enough with first nations, with social assistance clients. Yes, we would have enough to solve labour market issues at the entry level in Yukon, in Whitehorse.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Yes, of course.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  If we had the proper training, if we had the proper attitudes, because this is a big issue in small business as well, that we have had in the past.... Employees come in and they get hired. They'll be there for a few days and then leave. The attitudes are questionable, to say the

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  The problem over the last few years has been things such as Internet shopping and a transition in Whitehorse to a franchised economy. If you look at Main Street, you will see close to 80% of the businesses are now franchises. If you look to the north, you'll see that most of the

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Yes. That's because the huge Wal-Marts and the Canadian Tires that we have now, the franchises, are keeping people shopping here a little bit more. But in terms of the smaller businesses, the sole-proprietorship businesses, the small partnerships, in the last year we've lost 28 b

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Absolutely. We have some programs that we're running at the chamber. One of those programs, called “Partnering for Success”, is bringing together a steering committee that is representative of all the sectors. So we have government, the city, the mining sector, the regional direc

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  No.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Yes, we've heard from them.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  When we were moving towards having the Canada Winter Games, there was the creation of a pan-northern tourism strategy. We've made recommendations that the pan-northern strategy be brought back into effect to assist the tourism industry across the north. So that's one recommendati