Daniel MacIsaac
Northern News Services

NNSL (May 05/99) - Defending himself over the handling of the NWT Development Corporation in the legislature, Minister Stephen Kakfwi has sought to clarify his position.

"I have always taken these responsibilities very seriously," he told Tu Nedhe MLA Don Morin last week, "but it is not possible to micro-manage the operation of the department at every level."

Minister of Resources, Wildlife and Economic Development, Kakfwi is also justice minister and minister responsible for national constitutional issues as well as for the development corporation.

RWED deputy minister Joe Handley backed up his boss Monday, discussing the operational audit.

"I don't think it reflects badly on the minister," he said. "It may to some extent on the president or the CEO because he's the man in charge -- because if the corporation is losing money and not improving, he's responsible. The minister is politically responsible but it's up to the president to keep him notified."

Handley said Glenn Soloy left his position as corporation president and chief executive officer in March and that he took over until Premier Jim Antoine appointed Fred Koe to head the corporation at the end of the month.

"Mr. Soloy had expressed his desire to pursue interests in the private sector, and the premier obliged him," said Antoine's executive assistant, Pietro de Bastiani.

"Mr. Koe was head of the department on aboriginal affairs and had a strong background in accounting," de Bastiani said, "so the appointment makes good use of that background."

Handley said a department-initiated operational review is currently ongoing and is being performed by the Hay River accounting firm Fraser Matthews & Co. Handley said it was the corporation's inability to provide the Edmonton-based federal auditor general with information that sparked the new, proposed audit.

Subsidiaries affected

Closely linked to the corporation's future is the fate of its subsidiaries -- including Arctic Trading Company Ltd. and Great Slave Forest Products.

As Kakfwi announced in the assembly last week and as Handley said Monday, the operation of Arctic Trading's five southern retail outlets is being wound up because of persistent financial losses. Handley said the two Toronto stores are being handed over to the Nunavut Development Corporation, which will continue to stock NWT products.

MLA Don Morin had also raised the question of Fort Resolution's Great Slave Forest Products in the legislature, and Handley said talks over its future continue this week.

"We don't expect the subsidiaries to make money but to produce jobs -- and for that we're willing to provide a subsidy, usually at about $10,000 per job," he said, "but at the sawmill, for example, it's gone up to about three times that."