NNSL (Sep 29/99) - Building a new convention centre, mining museum or extending the runways at Yellowknife airport are a few of the ideas put forward to keep Giant workers in the North.

Ile Royale consultant David Connelly was hired by the Canadian Autoworkers Local 2304 to find ways to keep 280 Giant employees from packing up and going south. The workers are out of a job following an announcement that Miramar Mining Corp. will be buying the bankrupt Giant mine.

So far, Connelly has consulted with 20 groups that fall within six areas of interest -- business, aboriginal, social, territorial, City of Yellowknife, and environmental. From that, two plans are emerging to entice unemployed Giant workers to stay.

"The first is to secure government investment for an infrastructure project. That would offset the impact of the Giant closure by utilizing the miner's skills until the Diavik mine comes online," Connelly said.

"The second type of suggestion centres around ways to transfer the employees of Giant mine to other jobs in the North using existing government programs."

Connelly said the government programs include those designed to retrain workers, wage subsidy programs, apprenticeship support and job-find programs. "The ultimate goal of both objectives is to minimize the impact on the economy by keeping employment here," Connelly said.

Connelly added that representatives from the GNWT Department of Finance, Yellowknife department of finance, and the Yellowknife Chamber of Commerce have met to prepare an independent fact sheet on the social and economic impact of the Giant mine closure.

The fact sheet they come up with will be released next week.

"In order to get people to move forward, we're determining ideas and those ideas are going to cost something," Connelly said.

"To legitimize an infrastructure investment, we need to identify the social and economic cost of not doing anything. We have to have an agreed upon fact sheet outlining what the impacts of not doing anything will be."

Northern Frontier Visitors Association general manager Rebecca Jaud said their board, which represents 130 tourist and community based organizations, is meeting today (Wednesday) to discuss how best to support the infrastructure suggestions.

"We support the infrastructure idea because the ideas that have been suggested all benefit the tourist industry in some way," Jaud said.

"The good thing about the infrastructure ideas are that they don't just benefit the tourism industry, they benefit all business owners."

GNWT Finance Minister Charles Dent said although unrelated to the Giant crisis, there has been "considerable talk" about the federal government making significant contributions to highway projects. One of the suggested infrastructure projects to keep workers here is to accelerate the construction of the road to Rae.

"Any strategic investment (in infrastructure) is going to take a detailed examination of benefits and costs," Dent said.

"I can't make any promises on behalf of the GNWT but at the same time if someone comes forward with ideas, we'll definitely look at them."

CAW Local 2304 plant chair Steve Petersen said Connelly is being paid about $1,000 a day to do his work. They expect to employ him for another 10 days. The money to pay him is coming out of what's left of the $70,000 fund -- $50,000 federal government and $20,000 GNWT -- that was set up to assist the union in its attempt to challenge the Miramar deal.

"Connelly's suggestions are going to be useful, but not tomorrow," Petersen said.

"What we want to show our members is that if they do stay around, we can retrain them and find them a good job.

"But before we promise anything we have to show that infrastructure projects can be viable and done in a timely fashion," Petersen said.