Richard Gleeson
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Mar 15/00) - The North is the new kid on the block right now, but it will be a diamond industry player to be reckoned with in the future.

That's a message Education, Culture and Employment Minister Jake Ootes, Tu Nedhe MLA Steve Nitah and GNWT diamond director Martin Irving will be taking to the March 21-23 International Isreali Rough Diamond Conference in Tel Aviv.

"We're forecasting that we're going to be in the top six diamond producers in the world," said Ootes. "I think we have to continue to concentrate on making business leaders in the diamond industry around the world aware of what we're doing."

There is currently one diamond cutting and polishing plant, Sirius Diamonds, operating in the North. Another two are being built -- one in Ndilo scheduled to open next month and another scheduled to open in June next door to Sirius near the Yellowknife Airport.

"We want people to become aware we do have, through our socio-economic agreements, access to a certain amount of rough diamonds. That means we can set up the value-added industries. We want to put that message across to people that are in the business."

Premier Stephen Kakfwi -- then minister of Resources, Wildlife and Economic Development -- was invited to the conference last fall. He assigned Ootes to attend in his place because the assembly will be sitting during the week of the conference.

Ootes will be making a presentation to the 500 attendees from around the world about the opportunities for secondary industry in the NWT.

The presentation will focus on the opportunities for setting up cutting and polishing plants here in the NWT. Ootes will be telling the audience the opportunities come with a catch -- if they want to do business here, foreign companies have to partner with local companies and provide local employment.

"One of the main goals is to make them familiar with the fact that we as a government are very interested, that we've already set up and encouraged several cutting and polishing plants," said Ootes.

Incentives the government provides includes loan guarantees, training dollars and start-up funding.

Ootes will also be noting the North is also becoming a training ground for prospective diamond cutters.

Aurora College now offers a pre-employment training program for those hoping to get into the industry.

In co-operation with the High Diamond Commission of Belgium, the government last fall established the world's first diamond-cutting certification program.